Conrad's course plot is good, and the trip to the nearest giant goes smoothly.  The two ships are about three hours from achieving a low orbital insertion - a couple of quick loops around the planet, and then move on to the next.

Even this far out, more than a half million kilometres above the cloud tops, the giant planet's EM field is already interfering slightly with the sensor suites of both ships.  Fortunately the mismatched pair are the same in one respect, they both have state-of-the-art passive arrays, though Ore Hound's active sensors have been shut down for some time, and she is receiving a tight-beam feed from Profit Margin.  All part of the subterfuge of making it look like a single ship.

Ghosts dance across the display screens.  Small though it is, this giant seems active.  The part of the world on the nightside of the terminator is constantly lit by huge flashes of lightning.  The daylight side is the colour of a fresh bruise, and just as angry-looking.

The planet has a ring system close in.  Dirty ice mostly, mixed with dust, and occasional large chunks of rock.  Six small moons, only four of them even close to spherical, orbit the world, though the system records indicate that the exact number of moons changes from time to time.

All in all, it's not a hospitable corner of the system, and a good place for somebody to hide.

"Jago, I'm pickin' up somethin' a li'l odd here.  The outermost moon is just a snowball, an' it don't reflect radar too well, but there somethin' there that's showin' as real solid.  Look."

Conrad slides the radar readout across to Jago's panel.  The moon shows up as a gray disk, with blurred edges.  Sitting near one edge of the disk is a bright spot.  The navigator continues to work on the sensors, trying to better define the object.

“You getting this Jockram?” Jago asks over the tight beam, “I’m going to move in a little closer.”

“Good spot,” Jago gives Conrad the nod as he makes small adjustments to the course of the Profit Margin to bring it round a lot closer to the planetoid in questions, then, for the benefit of those not in cabin, he puts it up on the relay screens and adds a little commentary via the intercom.

“This little ice ball is the outer moon of the planet below us, we are not sure what that bright spot is so we’re getting a little closer to take a look.”

"Ahah!" Conrad suddenly lets out an exclamation of triumph, "Got somethin' now.  Looks to be 'bout a hunerd metres long, maybes a touch less.

The navigator's hands start dancing across the controls, setting up a new course which will swing the two ships in closer to the icy moonlet.

"That ol' moon ain't much bigger, two hunerd klicks diameter.  Most likely a captured chunk from some comet.  Low density, so not much gravity, but that bright blip is metal.  Once we're a mite closer I can grab a spectro readin', but for now, that's the most I can tell."

"Seventy-three minutes, Jago, an y'all'll be able ter reach out an' touch it."

He sends the new course data to Jago's panel.

Unsure of it's exact nature, Tylen brings his turret to bear on the unidentified object. He does not attempt to get an active lock, simply aims the laser.

The outermost moon is small and bright.  A shade over 195 km in diameter, with a high albedo that makes it shine across most of the visual spectrum.

Conrad's new course brings the two ships in close, less than twenty klicks above the surface, both of them moving backwards, against the full thrust of their main engines, as they try to slow down for a better look, attempting to match the highly eccentric orbit of the tiny moonlet.

From that height, it looks even more like a snowball.  Spectrographic analysis confirms it.  Mostly water ice, with impurities.  Surface gravity is only 0.01 G, and the temperature on the sunside is a balmy -130°C.  Not even athe faintest whisp of atmosphere, though there is a slow moving cloud of ice particles around it.

The surface is cratered, and split by cracks.  One of those craters is almost forty kilometres wide, and at the bottom of that lays the metal object.  It looks like a ship, though it is crumpled, crushed, and broken beyond repair.  Partly buried in the ice, it seems to match the original estimate which placed it at about a hundred metres long...

Jockram's voice crackles over the tightbeam, "Looks like those stories about a lost ship might have been based in fact."
This message was last updated by the GM at 12:58, Sat 02 Dec 2006.

"This reminds me of when I was a rookie, posted outside of Behydria Saron, with all this stuff around.  Back then I had nerves, but they quickly burnt out there," Yas comments with a chuckle as she keeps scanning for anything that moves or looks as if it does not belong there, moves in a suspicious manner or simple looks in her general direction in a way she kind of objects to.

"It gives me an idea for a restort, though - Come and loose weight faster than you can say 'I've been had!', money back if you can catch me guarantee and all," comes the next observation from her.  Then, another, more serious comment, "Yup, there's the honeypot.  Where's the bees then, I wonder?"

Comfortable that THIS ship is not going to pose a threat to the "Profit Margin" Tylen switches his scan to the area AWAY from the planetoid covering any angle that a ship could use to approach them from the rear.

Watching the repeat from the bridge screens, Saskia suddenly gets up from her seat and crosses to the fusion plant, her bare feet padding across the floor.  The fingers of her right hand gently touch the housing of the D₂ injector module, following the curve along to the toroidal bulge of the reaction chamber, then on to the power converter.

There's a dead ship down there, and dead ships have ghosts that haunt their graves.  Ghosts that can reach out and clutch at the heart of a good engineer.

For this ship to have broken like that, in such low gravity, she must have hit hard.  More important, by the time she hit, she wasn't capable of avoiding the collision. even if her crew had wanted to.

Something had killed her, long before she slammed into this moon.

Shui watches the display with some curiosity, from the crew lounge.  Her dataglove taps into the main screens, and while the resolution is comparably poor, it is enough for her to at least follow along with what transpires.

Especially with the various voice-overs.

“Might have a something to salvage,” Jago replies to Jocklram, “but I’d be surprised if it’s been there ten years, it aint exactly hidden, about the right size though.”

“Eyes peeled everyone,” Jago continues over the intercom, Conrad, lets see just how good this navy stuff is, active scan, max range please.”

"As peeled as a banananas," Yas replies over the intercom and does what she says, keeping an eye out for any kind of trouble.  It would not do to fall asleep here and now, even if that stubborn thing in her back is kind of gnawing on her more than before.

But then, it might just be that she knows what it is now.

She starts to sing an ancient classic, finding that she enjoys some of the really, really old music sometimes.

"I won’t go away
Right here I’ll stay

Stand silent in flames
Stand tall ‘till it fades

Shoot me again
I ain’t done yet

Shoot me again

All the shots I take
I spit back t you
All the shit you fake
Comes back to haunt you

All the shots

All the shots I take
What difference did I make?
All the shots I take
I spit back at you

I won’t go away, with a bullet in my back
Right here I’ll stay, with a bullet in my back

Shoot me
Take a shot

I’ll stand on my own, with a bullet in my back
I’m stranded and sold , with a bullet in my back

I bite my tongue
Trying not to shoot back
No compromise
My heart won’t pump the other way

Wake the sleeping giant
Wake the beast
Wake the sleeping dog
No, let him sleep"


_{Metallica, Shoot Me Again (from St. Anger)}

Profit Margin's active sensor arrays come on-line, at full power, reaching with electromagnetic fingers to feel out anything within range.  Time seems to crawl, as the systems sweep space out to their maximum range...

Then something appears.  Far smaller than even the most miserable moon of this gas giant, ship-sized, and five light seconds out.

Doppler analysis show that it's closing, fast.

Conrad starts running the numbers,  Calculating just how long they've got.

"'tain't natural anyways.  It's decelleratin', makin' two gees.  Let's see now.  Range is 'bout one point five million, an' it'll get here in," Conrad pauses, and watches as the data flows across his display, "one hour and forty minutes.  Near as I c'n tell, it's in the four hunerd d-ton range, so 'bout twice our size."

Tylen picks up the blip.

He switches on the targeting comp and begins to plot a firing solution. He flicks the com, opening a channel to Jago.

"Bossman, I have a bead on the bogie. Want me to get an active lock so they know we're watching?"

His fingers dance across the keyboard, preparing the Laser.

“No, stand by Tylen, and you Yaz, let’s not show our hand to early.”

“Conrad, how much of that one hour, forty minuets before they come within firing range?”

Jago triggers the tight beam, “Jockram, we have a ship incoming, about 400 tons and probably military, ETA 19.35 hours.”

“Probably military because its sensors have out classed our Navy one,” Jago remakes to Conrad as he leavers himself from the pilot seat, “I’m just going to have a quiet word with Yaz, hold the fort for a minuet.”

Jago heads form the turret command points at the back of the cabin, and knocks on one of the doorways, “cooee, anyone home,” he calls jovially.

OOC
I’m assuming that these are locked from inside and don’t have a door bell :O)

Tylen nods to himself, Jago obviously has a plan. He powers the Laser anyway, but refrains from painting the target. Instead he tracks the ship manually, controlling his turret like an old fashioned video game keeping the crosshairs on the moving image. He set's the computer to calculating a solution for the missile, based on the data it recieves from his manual track and links the Laser and the missile fire controls together. If he is required to fire, the Laser will discharge directly at the crosshair and the computer will fire the missile on an intercept course based on the data it has amassed. He selects a track from his library, and the ancient music booms through his soundproof cocoon.....

"Armed and ready.....My sights are set on you!"

Tension crawls upward in the lounge as Shui waits.  There is little else she can do at the moment, save pray.  She isn't given to prayer, so waiting seems to be the proper choice.  After a moment, the doctor gets up, moves to the sink, and begins to mechanically change the coffee, all the while keeping her attention focused on the flickering holoscreen from her dataglove.

"Sure thing, boss.  No need to tip them off.  Make sure our little friend gives us a hug so they won't spot us too soon, eh?" Yas replies with a chortle, sounding utterly relaxed.

Then there is a knock on the door and she coos, "Ooo, please don't come in, I'm not decent yet!"

Pushing the controls she opens the door and grin at the sight of Jago outside.

"Captain, my captain!  By what honour am I to bask in the glory of your presence?" she asks, looking every bit a rascal as she says it teasingly.

"They'll be in range 'bout fifteen minutes 'fore that, so an hour an' twen'y five, or so.  An hour an thirty to be sure of 'em." Conrad calls out, as he checks the displays again.

"They ain't usin' Actives, so I can't tell much 'bout what they've got, but I don't reckon it'll be better'n ours.  The gear we got is purrty much the best there is.  It's poss'ble they only found us 'cause someone tol' them we'd be snoopin' 'bout in these parts."

Because someone told them.  Shui goes over those words in her thoughts.  Sunzi basics - if you want your enemy to come to you, feign weakness or take something he desires.  Perhaps the feigned weakness was the knowledge of where the enemy should be, and the provision of an 'ally'...one who would turn on them the moment the battle is joined.

And thus, a supposed weakness becomes a strength.  She feels ill.  But certainly the rest of the crew has this in mind...Mr. Dietz, no doubt, is thinking the same.

Jockram's voice comes back over the comm, "Yes, we see him on the feed.  I expect you glow pretty bright too, since you went active, so my guess is that he hasn't noticed us tucked in nice and cozy.  Just give the word, and we'll deliver our surprise."

Saskia hurries into the lounge, bare feet padding across the carpet.  Dinner will probably be late, if there's going to be trouble, but she has plenty of time to grab a coffee, and there might be some cookies or something that she can snack on while she keeps an eye on things.

Shui is there, working and looking unhappy.

"Hi, Shui.  I'm just gettting a coffee.  Feeling okay?" and then realization hits her, "Oh - you've never been in a fight with us before, have you?  Worried?"

Jago chuckles, and leans into the cabin for a private word with Yazmin.

Shui turns toward Saskia, and a brilliant smile lights up her features.  "No, I have not, I fear."  She touches the coffeepot, three-quarters finished brewing by this point, then grows more serious.  "Should you wish anything more, Ms. Blake, I would be more than happy to find something for you."  She looks down at her hands for a long moment, then sighs.

"I fear I am more than a little concerned, yes, for the people who might die in this battle.  But there is nothing I can do."  A small, twisted smile tweaks the corners of her mouth.  "Save make coffee, it appears.  Fortunately, this is almost ready."

"How do things progress in engineering?" she attempts.

Yasmine talks quietly for a moment and then she chuckles.

Realising that there will be a longish delay, Tylen spends his time constantly refining and reviewing the firing solution presented by the targetting computer. Tracking the unknown ship in this way he hopes to reduce the possibility of a miss to almost zero.

In her quarters, Dhakhingzuel uses a handcomp to make her own calculations, based on the relays from the Bridge, translating the data into measurements which she is more familiar with.

"Hah!" she crows, as the figures trace across the display of the handcomp, and she stabs a claw-tipped finger at the blip on the relay monitor. "Gvaghak nyar, kchu'vot traesh Oezzarr vugh!  Dzur harg Oezzarr vugh! HAKUGHT!"  She is standing now, leaning forward, hands spread on the tabletop, and snout only centimetres from the screen.  Her ears are laid flat, and her words are slurred as her lips are pulled back to bare her teeth.

"Everything is running smoothly back there.  You don't need to worry about that.  I'd know if there was some sort of problem." Saskia replies, as she waits for coffee.

"Shouldn't really be worrying too much about a fight, either.  The techs did a good job, when they upgraded Profit Margin, Shui.  She's got weapons that are purely military issue, upgraded sensors, and a better computer.  Anybody tangling with her is going to get one big frelling shock."

The engineer gives a nervous, embarrassed smile "I mean, I know she doesn't look like anything special, but she is - inside, where it counts.  She was a fighter, even before the refit."

Jago is smiling as he returns to his seat and quickly runs through the displays on his panel.

“The other ship won’t be in range for a while so take it easy for an hour or so,” Jago announces over the intercom and the tight beam.”

“Any thoughts on tactics here Conrad? I’m thinking of just cruising along this course and letting them come to us, but perhaps we could make use of that moon, or the planet, especially if they turn out not to be streamlined.”

Shui waits until the pot is finished, then carefully pours a cup for Saskia, adding in that appropriate extras.  Her smile, as she hands the cup to the other woman, is definitely weak.

"I'm truly gratified to hear everything is moving along well," she notes quietly.  And truthfully.  "I am concerned about any combat for a number of reasons, though.  Needless to say, the first of which is that I have no wish to become part of space debris, or worse, salvage for the pirates."  She purses her lips - unpleasant thought.  "However, you know your ship, and your ship's abilities - if you say it is a match for the other ship, and possibly our escort, should they prove false, I believe you."  A relief, that.  She briefly feels sick at her hypocriscy, recalling that for her to live through space combat means others must die.

"But...regardless of who wins, I fear the death toll," she finishes quietly, absently checking the coffee pot.  No, it's full.  When did that happen?  Is it new?  A click, in her mind, and she remembers changing it just minutes ago.

Very distracted, Shui notes, focusing more on the here and now.

"It must be nice, to know so much about your ship that your faith is unshakable," she says, interested in both that subject of conversation, and getting afield of the current subject.

Before the door closes Yas shouts, "Hey, I'm not that kind of girl!"

She chuckles as the door closes and resumes her duty of monitoring the instruments and the situation as a whole.

An hour to kill, the boss says.  She relaxes and allows her years of training and experience to take over, permitting her to spend an insane amount of time waiting while staying sharp and alert without being tense.

She starts to sing on that ancient song again...

Saskia's nervousness evaporates.  The one thing that she does feel confident talking about is the ship.  The fact that Shui seems to want to discuss it too is good.

"She's a good ship.  She looks after her family.  You can depend on her."

Then she looks about, as if to make sure nobody is listening, casually places one hand over the voice pickup of the nearest intercomm, and says quietly, with complete seriousness, "Yes, I have faith in Profit Margin, because she knows that I won't talk to her for a frelling month if she lets me down."

"A good reason," Shui replies, quietly.  It doesn't matter if Saskia actually believes the ship can listen to her, or if it's just a matter of superstition.  Whatever keeps her confident in her work, whatever makes her work all the harder to keep this vessel together...there's nothing wrong with that.

And who's to say it doesn't actually DO so?

"Under the circumstances," she replies, sotto vocce, "I believe it's in all of our best interests that the ship continues to function well.  Including the Profit Margin's own...have there been any serious problems of late?  No issues with keeping it fully functional?"  She shifts, left to right, the tension of the waiting finally starting to eat at her equinamity.

Tylen can feel the adrenalin building as the other ship draws closer. His music library is set to random and a suprising mixture of classical and pop tunes from a millenia of Human civilisation wash over him. He seems unmoved by the music but, on closer inspection, is using the rythmn to co-ordinate his movements. His screen is split, a scrolling column of figures displayed next to a real-time video picture of the approaching vessel. The cross hairs on the video screen rest over the enginge cowlings of the unidentified ship. The music system produces the discordant opening bars of Jovanssen's "Silver Planet Trilogy" and Tylen's fingers rattle across the keyboard in time to the ominous rumble of the timpani.

"Got three choices, way I see it, Jago." Conrad raises a clenched fist, then extends the index finger.

"One: We can make a run for it.  They'll have the edge on us first off, since they got a higher speed for now, but if we head off at an angle they'll find it harder to close in.  Leastways until they slow down.  Then of course they'll have to catch up, with us acceleratin' all the way."

The second finger extends.  "Two: Stay here, an' keep our velocity low.  Might be able to stay close to the moon that way, and use it for cover.  I reckon they'll still have a fair bit of speed to burn off when they get here.  Most likely planning on a quick pass, an' a straffing run."

"Plus if'n they keep some speed, it helps them if'n we run for it.  But it means they can't swing so tight 'round the moon."

Another finger.  "Three: The planet.  We can try a slingshot, but once we get on that track, we'll be purtty much stuck with it.  Or drop into the clouds, an' take cover.  As I said, they'll have a heap of speed to drop, 'fore they can chase us, but it'll be close."

He shrugs and looks at Jago for a moment, then grins, and the pinkie extends.  "Four: Charge 'em.  They won't be 'xpectin' that.  I know I wouldn't be 'xpectin' it."

"Problems? Saskia's voice is filled with righteous indignation, "With my ship?  I've got some really strong soap in my quarters.  You should use it to wash your mouth out, after talking dirty like that."

She takes a mouthful of coffee, to try and hide her smile, but fails miserably.

"No, the only trouble we've had lately, with anything, was those bugs that got into the air filters.  Everything else has been fine."

"Goodness," Shui says quietly, following her 'talking to'.  "I shall endeavor to be more careful with my question.  What I meant to say was, have there been any more perdiferous attempts at sabotage, both intelligent or otherwise, upon your vessel?"  She turns to the counter with a small smile of her own, and begins to boil water for tea.

"Thank goodness," she replies, more seriously.  "Yes, your 'remedy' proved quite efficacious.  Hopefully we shall not have a reoccurance."  She takes a nervous glance up at the ventilation tube, imagining more of the 'hungry' sort of bug a-prowl.

"Saskia," she inquires quietly, turning away to deal with the tea, "how have your own experiences been aboard this vessel.  During 'action' as one calls it?"

Saskia considers her possible choices.

There is, of course, the old Navy joke: "Combat is hours and hours of boredom, followed by a few seconds of mind numbing terror amd instant death."

She doesn't say that, going instead for the much less traumatic option of just resting a hand on Shui's shoulder, and squeezing gently.  "Don't worry, Shui, you'll be fine."

She removes the hand, with a nervous smile.

"Sorry, I just got dirt on your jacket."

"That is what my jacket is for," Shui says, with a faint smile.  She brushes at the grease for a moment, but it's not important.  Not at all.  "Thank you," she replies, and means it.

"I have every confidence in the crew," she continues.  "They seem to know their job.  I cannot help but worry, for many different reasons."  She turns to the boiling kettle, and pours herself a steaming cup into which she dips the tea cozy (and the countdown begins).  "I expect it is always this way, is it not?"  She turns away from the counter, leans back against it to study Saskia.  "How do you manage?  Unaccustomed to..."  A wave of the hands.  "...this sort of thing as I am, I do not see how one might get used to it.  And yet you have, Saskia; to some extent or another."

While Jago considers the options, Conrad runs some simulations and checks the solutions for the courses for each of them.  When a decision is made, Jago will have the information he needs available immediately.

Tylen continues to refine his firing solution. Out of interest he runs the data of the approaching ship through all the available databases to see if he can identify the vessel or at least it's class and planet of manufacture.

"That's easy." replies the engineer, with a laugh, "I was Navy for sixteen years.  That's plenty of time to get used to it.  Saw some action - mainly anti-piracy, and some border skirmishes against vargr, up around Jesedipere.  That was when I served on the destroyer that put in at Arkadia just before we left, Shata Lunoqi."

She pauses, thoughtfully, "You're new to all this, aren't you?"

"Sixteen years?"  One of Shui's thin eyebrows rises slightly.  Again.  But her hands twist the teacup, proving her placid exterior to be that, and nothing more.  "Hardly surprising, then.  Dealing with pirates, border skirmishes...yes, that would provide plenty of experience with this sort of thing."

"I am," she confesses, "absolutely innocent to space combat.  I have never, ever, been involved in a battle or war."  The doctor tries a smile - it's a feeble thing.  But she looks ill, not afraid.  "I...have some difficulty picturing how it might go.  Perhaps that is a mercy."

Keeping an eye on things on her end, or her top, as it is, Yasmine operates on automatic more than anything else, going through check-ups time and again to ensure smooth operation, fine tuning and optimising settings.  While doing this she keeps an eye on both their newly arrived arrived guest and their little friend far closer by.

Nothing is ever what is seems, and if it is, then you can be sure it isn't, as her old sergeant would have put it.

"Well, I hope you mind me saying this," comes the answer, quietly spoken, "but I'm hoping we don't get enough chances for you to pick up much experience of it."

Gesturing with her free hand, Saskia indicates the whole ship, in general, "I like her just fine in one piece, without any more dents, bumps and scrapes."

Being what they were, the laws of physics have provided Jago with the luxury of time, to consider the various options, and he makes full use of it, although to all outward appearances, the captain is just lounging in his chair, enjoying the imaginary benefits of an unlit cigar.

After a while, Jago sits up and opens the tight beam and the intercom. “How does this sound Jocram?” he asks the other captain, “we are a single little blip on that guys screen, bumbling along in a straight line, ripe for the picking and easy to ho hit. Once he reaches firing range though, we both burn hard in different directions and open up on him from two sides. Should he chose to go after one of us, he has the other on his tail. If one of us gets hit, we head for the back of the moon down there and the other covers, that sound like a plan to you?”

“A couple of points though, prisoners are preferable to corpses, there are one or two questions I’d like to ask, and so would the authorities no doubt, also a intact ship is preferable to space junk, so I’d prefer, to incapacitate the ship if possible though not if the risk is to great.”

"That sounds good to me." comes Jockram's voice over the tightbeam, "Suck them in close, and then catch them by surprise."

"Don't worry about prisoners.  We specialise in precision cutting.  We'll aim to take out their engines... try to leave them without power for weapons and computers."
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 21:31, Fri 15 Dec 2006.

"Likewise," Shui notes quietly.  "I truly hope it will not be necessary for either of us to practice our respective crafts during or after this."  She fiddles worriedly with her dataglove, putting it back on (taken off for washing the dishes) and calls up the screens again.

Nothing changed.  Much.  Yet.

"I prefer people in much the same way as you prefer the Profit Margin."  A sip of the tea.  "I suppose it would be too much to ask for to have a bloodless end to this situation?" she inquires, mock-hopefully.  Well, truth be told half mock hopefully.

One can always hope.

"Sounds good to me, boss.  We'll sort out what to fire at once we got the details.  Wouldn't to for us all to hit the same spot and blow 'em up, after all.  Since's I'm on the 'shotguns' I'll let you fella's take the first shot and then I'll cover up with my wee peashooters.  How's that sounding?" Yas suggests over the intercom, figuring she would not be able to do much at the distance needed, but be able to wipe out anything once it was in her range.

"By then we'll know what we're dealing with too, I figure.  Oh, and of course, keep an eye open in case this is a decoy.  Nothing's ever what is seems even when it is, as my old sarge would say," she adds, figuring that it was never good to focus too hard on any single target and blind oneself to everything else.

Tylen opened the com to Yas's turret.

"OK Lady Bootneck, I'm tracking them in and I hope to minimise the chances of a miss by getting as much data as possible before we have to shoot. I guess I'm going straight for engineering with a missile as soon as Jago gives the word, then I'm gonna keep her lit up with the Laser until you're in range. After that I'll leave you an your "Shotguns" to pound them while I concentrate on point defence. Sound like a plan?"

"Lady!?  Them's fighting word, son!  Calling me such four-letter words!" Yas replies with a chuckle and then nods, even though he can not see it.  "And yeah, that was what I said, wasn't it?  Thanks for rephrasing it," she teases him, still chuckling, "but yeah, that is the plan, Sir Sandal."

The waiting starts...

An hour crawls by, as Jago holds Profit Margin in a tight loop around the moon, based on figures fed to him by Conrad.  The moon is too small to establish a real orbit around, but judicious use of the thrusters holds the ship, and her hidden partner, in a reasonable semblance of an one.

Shui and Saskia talk quietly in the Crew Lounge, as Saskia takes a break before the trouble starts.

Yas and Tylen man the turrets, calculating targeting solutions.  Only about forty minutes to go now, until their mystery visitor reaches their vicinity.  A little less than that until it's in range.

Tylen opens a channel to Jago and to Yasmine.

"I got an ID on the Bogeye, and it doesn't look good. Basically a standard 'Fat Trader' Hull, but she's got too many legs for a stock model. My gut says 'Smuggler' or 'Pirate', basically a 'Q' Ship. If she's got boosted drives she could have a power surplus so look out for upgraded shields and mil-spec weapons."

He settled into his chair and set the console to count down the remaining moments until they got into range.

“Thanks Tylen, you got that Jockram, Yas?”

“Shui, got anything for indigestion in that magic box of yours?”

"Certainly, Captain."  Shui stands, gives Saskia a quick smile.  "Likely as not, I shall be right back."  She goes into her pouch, finds a basic, over-the-counter solution for an upset stomach, and moves into the bridge area.

"Captain Lanza?  I assume it is indigestion and not a burgeoning flu."  A small smile indicates her feelings on that matter, and she proffers him a pill, along with a cup of water.  "You might want to avoid coffee for the time being," she notes, with a quick glance at all of the screens.  "Though that might seem unappealing at the moment."

“No actually, it’s just an excuse to call you up here without drawing attention,” Jago says with a smile, waving away the medication with his unlit cigar.

“Have you spoken to Dhakhingzuel, what’s your take on her?”

Before she can express her own doubts, Tylen comfirms them.  Listening to what he says she replies to them both.

"Yeah, it might be just a trader looking to scoop some fuel.  It's not like you have much options around here, with the other gasball being where it is."

Then she adds, just to be on the safe side, "Of course, that might not be so.  Just look at Profit Margin, how many would think she's a threat?  Beside, this might be how they haul stuff away, while they have some other ship doing the killing itself.  Yet again still, it might be a trader looking for cheap fuel."

"My opinion?"  Shui's eyebrows rise, and she fights a touch of embarassment at how easily she was taken in by the ruse.  And not even directed at her!  A talent for intrigue, even basic intrigue, is something she evidently does not possess.  Now she considers, long and hard, looking to give the Captain her best, possible opinion.

This is too important to be the steward, and choose a diplomatic route.  For this, she needs to be the doctor.

After a long pause, Shui finally speaks.  "Dhakhingzuel seems to be earnest and honest in her desires, Captain.  From my limited exposure to her, I see no duplicity regarding her plans for us."  She frowns.  "Though given the fact that I fell for your deception, I am unsure as to whether my opinion should count for a great deal."

Tylen frowns slightly at Yasmine's comments,

"Could be Yas, but she seems to be making a lot of headway for a simple trading ship. We'll know in a few minutes anyway."

He checks his console to confirm how long is left before he is in range and in the meantime enlarges the best visual he can get to see if he can spot the engine configuration. Bigger engines make a bigger target.....

"Hey, some people might prefer a good boots in speed to more cargo space, especially if they are trading in the rim or places where trouble is bound to be, that's all I'm saying.  There's also a lot of weird folks out there, and strange ships.  Just look at this one," Yas comments back with a crooked grin.

Tylen smiled a smile of his own. He was never quite sure when Yas was joking. As he scanned the picture of the approaching ship he compiled a playlist from his datapad ready for the engagement, if it ever came. As he did his eyes lit on a title that fit with what Yas had said. He selected it and a simple descending minor scale heralded the start of the piece....

"People are strange, when you're a stranger...."

Twenty minutes...

Twenty minutes until the bogey will be close enough to touch.  Already the targeting system for the laser and missiles on Tylen's turret are indicating that the other ship is in range, but any gunner worthy of the name knows that the chances of actually hitting anything at that distance are so slim that it'd just be a wasted shot.

Saskia makes her way back to her engines, just in case.

A call comes over the intercom from the passenger section, Corlan DeSant requesting Shui's presence.

"Hey, Ditzy, er, Conrad," Yas calls over the intercom, "can you calculate the course of that thing, to see if it is headed for the gasball?  If it isn't, there's another piece in the puzzle."

She believes it to be a no peaceful trader, but every bit of info will help in making the correct decision.  Waiting too long would be dangerous and foolish, opening fire too soon and later find out it was a civilian would be worse still.

OOC
Sorry Shui, no access to RPoL and then a technical problem prevented me from posting yesterday.

“Deception?” Jago’s brow furrows as he struggles to recall the deception that Shui is referring to, then smoothes as a smile dawns, “oh, the indigestion thing, that hardly counts as getting scammed,” he chuckles, “ besides, your opinion is highly valued in any case, let me know if you see anything suspicious though.”

The captain gives his doctor a friendly nod when Corlan calls, he turns his attention back to his instruments, and swaps potential course information with the ‘Ore Hound’ to ensure that they will set off on divergent courses.

“Burn in three minuets from now,” Jago announces to Jockram, and his own crew, “but if the guy gets a target lock, don’t wait for me to tell you.”

“Conrad, use a tight beam to send data on the other ship back to Arkadia please.”

His own transmission, Jago sends on the general net, “this is the free trader ‘Profit Margine’ calling the unknown vestal approaching at sped, Identify yourself please, and state your purpose.” (OOC Jago will include the respective positions of the two ships in that call).
This message was last edited by the player at 22:18, Thu 21 Dec 2006.

Tylen listens to the last notes of the song before slipping a call through to Jago.

"Boss man, we have range on the bogey, although chances of success are pretty slim right now range is decreasing. Tell me as soon as you want me to go active and I'll get 'em locked."

His fingers hover over the controls....

"I am glad to hear, Captain Lanza," Shui replies, with a short bow.  "Should I...detect any sign of duplicity, I will be certain to inform you."  She quickly programs her dataglove to have a channel available to the intercom at all times.  A mere touch of a single holo-key, no menus needed, will call it.

She knows if something goes wrong inside, she might not even have that much time.  But it's a start.

"I shall keep out of your way, for the moment," she murmurs, moving back out of the cabin to the lounge.

The comm crackles into life, "Profit Margin, this is the freighter Harper's Dream, inbound for refueling."

Jockram's voice comes in on the other channel, cool and calm, "Got that.  We've been waiting to move since we saw them out there, we'll be ready when you are."

"Negative on that, Yas." Conrad drawls, as he scans the figures, "'less'n he changes course 'bout three minutes ago, there's no way he's goin' for gas."

"Well, he could be, I guess, if'n he's got the worst nav in the whole Imperium.  But he'd have to be real bad, an' drunk to boot, to be that much out."

"Thanks, always nice with confimation," Yas replies with a smirk that can be heard but not seen since she is in her little turret box, ready to fry the would-be pirates if it comes to that.

She makes one last check to make sure everything is working at optimal capacity and that the targeting system is good enough to shoot the party hat of a house fly at a click's distance.  It would not do to aim for the weapons and end up frying the cockpit instead.

It would be embarrassing.

Back in engineering, Saskia monitors the chatter with half an ear, while moving about and checking the power and drive systems.

Which is perhaps a little odd, since all the readouts are relayed to her main panel anyway.

Also a little odd is the way her fingers, oh-so-accidentally, brush against the housings of various pieces of the ship's vital equipment as she passes them.  Whether she's trying to reassure herself, or reassure the machinery, isn't absolutely clear.

She hears Conrad and Yas discussing the course of the other ship, and sighs.

"That's it then, best behaviour now, kids." she says quietly as she moves to strap herself into her seat at the main panel.  Behind her, the drives and fusion plant hum their promises to behave perfectly.

One minute: Shui makes her way across to Corlan's cabin and finds the man sprawled across his bunk, watching the feeds from the bridge displayed across the holographic window.  He seems happy enough as she enters, if a little nervous, "Miss Tiesi... is it possible you could prescribe our other guest something to calm her nerves.  Several times now, I've heard her howling and yelling, very loudly."

Two minutes: Conrad confirms that he has squirted all the data he can get on the other ship back to Arkadia.  She's still coming in at maximum thrust.

Three minutes: "Let's dance." Jockram says cheerfully.  Ore Hound immediately swings her nose ninety degrees to port, and her drives cut in at a full two gees of thrust, accelerating her away from Profit Margin.  Coincidentally, this gives Tylen a nice clear shot at her main thrusters, if he needs to take it.

Harper's Dream if that's her real name, doesn't look to be changing course...

With a grim smile wrapped around his unlit cigar, Jago launches the Profit Margin on its predetermined trajectory, taking it away from the ore hound and widening the angle from the Harper’s Dream’s course. The ship vibrates under full power, and Jago gleans almost as much information from the well worn pilots chair as he does from the instruments and flashing lights on his panel.

Instructions to the crew are superfluous now, they all knew just what they were doing and Jago keeps stum and lets them get on with it.

"Mr. DeSant."  Shui bows.  She's uncomfortable, but hides it well.  Lack of comprehension is a problem.  But this is still Corlan, and she can certainly get by.  A small smile appears at his words, and she shrugs.  "Our other passenger has some deep emotional attachments to this situation, I fear.  I strongly doubt she would accept any medical assistance at this moment."

She glances over her shoulder.  "We have other quarters free," Shui notes.  "If you like, I can set you up in one, far enough distant that you will not be disturbed."  Should have thought of that, Shui.  Foolish.

Corlan smiles, "No, I'm fine here, thank you, and her condition is perfectly understandable.  I was less concerned about the noise, and more concerned that, in her overexcited state, she might injure herself.  Or possibly make herself ill."

Keeping an eye on things at her end, Yasmine Crow was more going on her instincts than though at this time.  Start to think and you start to sink, it was all a matter of acting and reacting rather taking conscious decisions once it came down to actual combat, which of course was why you had to hammer it in through repitition until you lived and breathed it.

Still for the time being, she kept her mind alert and in control.  With some luck there would be next to no combat, but rather a quick and easy disabling of the enemy vessel.

Yeah, right.

Tylen activates the targetting computer and locks on to the approacing ship. Missiles and laser are both locked upon the area containing the drives as far as he can determine from the ship's original specification and the data he has gathered on it during the approach. He triggers the com to Jago,

"Bossman I have a lock on our visitor. Ready to fire."

With the target still at extreme range, an alert signal sounds on the Bridge and in each of the two fire-control stations.

"Of course, Mr. DeSant.  I believe that-"  But the alarm cuts her off.

Shui peers at the screen, frowns.  She dials up the magnification (not needing a big picture, like the bridge crew), and studies the fast-moving speck on the screen.  Is that...an inbound missile?

The doctor swallows heavily, and clutches her emergency medical bag.  "Please excuse me, Mr. DeSant.  I believe your excitement has arrived."  She hurries from her quarters, headed for the lounge where she can strap in within easy reach of both quarters and crew.

“We have incoming missiles, eta, four minuets, twenty seven,” Jago announces mater of factly, “there may be some discomfort as I adopt evasive manoeuvres, please take precautions when moving around the ship.”

“Do you have that Jockram?”

“Stand by with the sand caster Tylen,” probably an unnecessary remark, but better safe than sorry.

The Captain lets the missiles close a while, then the ride suddenly becomes very bumpy as the gravity compensators struggle to keep up with sudden, and unpredictable moves that Jago is adopting to try and confuse the missiles tracking systems.

OOC
Evasive manoeuvrings 17

Tylen fired the locked on missile, then calmly switched the fire control to the sandcasters. He held back on the Sandcasters until he was sure of a target.
He flipped the Com, opening the channel to Yas's turret.

"How good is that shotgun of yours on clay pigeons Jarhead?"

He left the channel open, and as the turret tracked the hostile ship, he prepared to line up another shot.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:53, Wed 03 Jan 2007.

"I had no idea clay pigeons had jars for heads," Yas replies with a surprised tone of voice, and leaves it at that.  In a few moments it will all be clear whether her aim is still good or not.

Locking onto the uncoming missle all she can do now is wait for the little pin to get within reach of her tweezers.  There was time yet to get her mind all around it, even though she would go on auto rather than manual, so to speak.

Time seems to slow to a crawl, minutes dragging past as the two missiles hurtle through the void.  Harper's Dream flares brightly across the displays as her pilot starts making short, random bursts with her lateral thrusters...

The missiles pass each other, less than forty kilometres apart, and Jockram's voice comes back over the comm, "Yep, we're tracking that, Profit Margin, and here's our little surprise for them."

The mining ship's laser pulses briefly, then, "Dammit Hegerich!  You missed!"

With the passing seconds, it becomes increasingly apparant that the incoming missile is locked on Ore Hound.  Jockram starts throwing the smaller ship through its own dance of Life and Death...

"I got it," Yas mentions casually and fires as the missle appears over the horizon of the ship as it rolls, both barrels.  No point in sparing the guns, after all, and like a shotgun, it is more effective when using both at the same time - or more, if you got one of those.

Even as she fires she feels in her gut that it will hit, and the next intant her gut is awarded with the silent explosion of a meeting between a missle and two bolts of plasma.  The former loses.

"That's one stiff one you owe me, so far, Jocky," Yas sends to the other ship with a chuckle as she turns to prepare herself and the guns for another action.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:13, Wed 03 Jan 2007.

Seeing that Yas is taking care of business, Tylen lines up the laser on the hostile vessel. The weapon was probably the least potent in the Profit Margin's arsenal, but it's long range was it's advantage. Allowing the computer to calculate the deflection he thumbed the firing button.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:34, Thu 04 Jan 2007.

"Tylen, I'm trying to get you a little extra power for the laser.  It should give you a bit more punch, for as long as I can hold it together."

Saskia turns away from the comm panel, and starts reconfiguring the ships EPS grid, stealing energy from anything that isn't vital right now.

She mutters, as she works. "Just a bit more from there, and here, and then reroute that through there."

OOC: Saskia Blake rolled 11 using 2d6+4. Reconfigure EPS.

The Profit Margin powers on through the inky blackness, taking a wide ark that will bring her eventually close to the quarry and on a converging course, Jago didn’t want to pass the other ship and end up flying in the opposite direction. Actually closing the gap was not a serious consideration, as the Harpers Dream had that aspect well covered, Jago was concentrating his efforts, and those of the drives that respond so readily to his fingertip commands, on maintaining an advantageous position for the long hall.

“Nice Yas,” he mutters as the missile evaporates in a ball of plasma.

"Thanks, Yaz.  We're a mining ship.  Haven't got much in the way of defences, short of dumping Hegerich's underwear drawer out the airlock and scaring the missiles off!"

Tylen's own missile seems set to cruise past Harper's Dream, only to pull in at the last few seconds, and detonates close enough to do a little damage at least, with any luck.

His laser shot misses, though, as the other ship continues its random course corrections.


A horrible howling laugh echoes throughout Profit Margin, issuing from the intercom system, and a voice yells, "Hanngruk chofe sakkurr gnaut dhochaz, Oezzarr!"

The sensor warns of another missile launch from the target ship.

Shui sits in the lounge, staring at the holo screen of her dataglove.  She feels ill - people out there are a click of a button from death, right now, and there is nothing at all she can do to prevent it.

The fingers of her free hand tighten on the edge of the table, helplessly.

Just about to answer Jockram as the doggie song began, Yas grimaces where she sits and nearly switches off the intercom.  Luckily the strange yowling ends before she can do it, and she chuckles, shaking her head.

Then her attention goes to another little blip and she prepares for it as she did the last one.

"Well now, Jock, I think that'd be classified as biological warfare, and would possibly cause them to abandon this system," she jests with the other ship as she fine tunes things in preperation for another "shotgun" blast.

Perhaps someone will slip the Vargr a bone and she will keep quiet - having that kind of noise in mid-battle would not go down well, she believes.

Seeing the power indicator jump back to fully charged, Tylen thumbs the trigger again, sending a bolt of crimson energy towards the hostile vessel.


As the charge indicator moves rapidly back to full charge, Tylen takes a chance on a second shot.



He calls engineering.

"Thanks Saskia, keep it coming."

"Nice shot, Tylen.  Their thrust dropped by 'bout half.  That's goin' to make it real tricky for them to meet up with us.  'less'n we lets them, that is.  I'm not pickin' up any energy weapons fire from them, yet.  My guess'd be that they're either waiting for a clean shot, or they only got short range stuff, like Yas's usin'."

Tylen triggers the laser, and watches as the additional power being routed to the capacitor charges it up again...

Meanwhile the other ship continues to decelerate, but not as rapidly as before.  Conrad's display shows him that it's going to overshoot by a long way.

With the laser recharged, Tylen fires again, and something changes on all the displays... Harper's Dream's drive suddenly goes off entirely.  She's moving now with no way to slow down until she's repaired.

If she's not able get the drives back online, she's going to pass the moonlet at about ten thousand kilometres per hour...

Meanwhile, the second missile is just edging into range of Yas' guns, and this one is aimed Profit Margin!

The drive on the approaching vessel shut down and Tylen felt a surge of satisfaction.

"Nailed you, you bastard."

He growled.

The Proximity warning bleeped to remind him of the incoming missile, and he swung the turret to bear, bringing the sandcasters on line in case Yas didn't catch this one.

"OK Yas, this one's all yours."

Tylen's satisfaction at seeing the ship sudden shut down its drives puts a wave of relief through Shui - this isn't some kind of clever maneuver on the part of the pirates.  And perhaps, she can hope, perhaps the weapon simply killed their engines, and nothing else?  It is a laser?  Pinpoint aim, little deflection, and all of that?

Perhaps, she thinks, this might be one of those unlikely occurances.  A battle without any deaths, save that of equipment.

"I'm on it like a Tyderian rhino on a Ulisian honeybed," Yas replies as she tracks the missle.

She has it dead in her sights as it hurtles towards them, she feels it in her guts.

Oh yeah, another one for The Crow, she mouths the moment after she pulls the trigger.  Safer than money in the bank.

The rewards is a silent explosion as the twin bolts of plasma meets the missile.  The latter decides it does not want to play anymore and explodes, leaving the plasma to dance out into the drakness of eternal space in search of a place where they can settle down and do whatever plasma do when plasma is alone.

Sometimes she's so good she almost scares herself.  Almost.

Saskia frowns at the thought of a ship with its drives knocked out, picturing the amount of work that might be needed to get it going again.  Meanwhile it could be going anywhere, with no way to change course, and no way to slow down.

She opens the intercom.  "Based on my own experience, and a guess at what's going on over there, I'd say it could take anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours to get her running again.  Most likely one to two hours."

A brief pause, and then she asks, "Conrad, can you plot her course?  See if she's likely to hit anything in the next, let's see," a quick mental calculation, "ten hours?"

That should do.  It allows a good margin, in case she has the most useless frelling engineering crew in the history of the Universe.

The ride smoothes out considerably when Jago quits jinking and watches the plasmatechnic display far out in space ahead of him.

“Well done people, relax but keep monitoring, that ship could wake at any time.”

“That’s a very good point that Saskia has bought up, once you’ve done that plot Conrad, could you plot me an intercept please.”

Until the figures arrive, Jago makes use of his many years of experience to estimate an approximate course, he brings the Profit Margin round and opens her it, it will be a long chase.”

“Shui, could you have a quiet word with Dhakhingzuel please, see if you can persuade her to do her war cries into a pillow, rather than the intercom mike.”

"Wilco Boss."

Tylen remains alert, switching from the Sand Caster back to the Missile Launcher. As there is no further need for stealth he maintains an active lock upon the damaged ship, periodically "painting" the target with a transmission strength laser in order to improve the odds of a hit. He wants the occupants to know that any unexplained move will result in a warhead up the exhaust.

++ Of course, Captain Lanza. ++  Shui acknowledges her receipt of the request, and stands to head down to the quarters.  Pausing, she looks at her hands.  They shake.

The doctor moves to the coffee machine, mechanically going through the motions of preparing a new pot.  Perhaps nobody died.  The work is soothing to her, allowing her body to run through its paces without thought.  She wishes she could persuade her mind to do the same.  Please, let nobody have died.

Once the pot is active, Shui slips out of the lounge and down the hall.  I should have spoken to her at the time.  Fool.  Stopping at Dhakhingzuel's door, she chimes and waits for a response.

Conrad runs the figures, and laughs quietly, "Seven minutes at two gees to match speed.  Ten to catch up with her an' then match up.  Fifteen minutes, Jago, an' y'all could be standin' in her main lock demandin' their surrender."

"Best be quick 'bout it though.  By my reckonin', if they stay on this course, they'll get too close an' likely be pulled into the sun, in the Thamber system, in roughly, ooooh, one and three-quarter million years, or there'bouts.  Give or take a couple of thousand."

He makes sure he forwards the figures to Saskia.

"Well, that'll take one bad engineer," Yas chuckles and shakes her head.

"Quad, don't relax too much, though, as they still got some teeth left," she adds and keeps her focus on the ship.  The closer it gets, the less time to react to threats, after all.

Profit Margin and the Orehoung will find out of the would-be pirates have got any surprises as well once they get up close, although it seems unlikely at this point.

Still, nothing is ever what it seems to be, as the old sarge said.

"No problems Yas, I've still got her locked. One false move and they get a high explosive suppositary."

Tylen replied. Just for good measure he painted the target with the transmission laser again. If the bogey had any sensors left then the message would be clear, "Sit still or else!"

The door opens, and a somewhat excited Vargr stands before Shui, her tail thrashing from side to side so hard it almost throws her off balance.  Before the woman can speak, the alien laughs, and announces, "Thees is good-dest day!  Ghost of Oezzarr will see his rev-vengeance.  Piraates has been stopped, and now Cap-tain hunts for kill!  Was good choice, to pick Hoomaan ship Profit Mar-gin."

"Hoomaans knows Hoomaans.  Knows good place to hunt piraates."

She beckons Shui into the cabin, and pulls a small, flat container from her inside jacket pocket.  Unscrewing the cap, she fills it with a clear liquid from the flask, and offers it to Shui.  "This good kveghoskh... good-dest that credits will buy.  You drink with me?  Drink to Oezzarr, and fall of piraates, yes?"


Outside, the subject of Dhakhingzuel's delight is slowly tumbling, having apparantly lost attitude control, along with her main thrusters.

Jockram's voice comes over the tight beam, "That looks good to me.  Nice and clean.  My compliments to your gunners.  I'm not picking up any radiation from her, so I'm guessing that her core containment's intact."

“Depending on their attitude, that might have been the easy bit,” Jago responds to Jockram, “lets see if they are ready to talk now.”

Switching to the standard frequency, the captain addresses the other ship, “Harpers Dream, this is the Profit Margin, do you still have comms over there?”

"Nothing like boarding a ship.  This is where they sent for the Marines, you know, as the Navy was too scared for it," Yas chuckles in response to various statements, "and Jock, it's my job, but you're welcome, and free to by me another drink when we're back on ground!"

"Looks like we'll have some fun flying to do too before we can connect with them," she notes as the would-be pirates' ship dances about with a bad attitude even for a pirate ship.

Shui bows politely at the invitation.  She listens to Dhakhingzuel with a smile on her face, one that someone with a fair degree of empathy (and familiarity with the human psychology) would identify as 'frozen'.  "Certainly."  With another small bow, she slips into the room.  Inside, the doctor notes the screen, sees the ship continuing to tumble.  She hopes those within are alive.

Vengeance for one.  Retribution for another.  And it never stops.

Suddenly some of the things her father used to say make perfect sense...from a coldly, draconic point of view.  Disgusted, Shui thrusts that aside.

She takes the flask gingerly.  It would be rude to sniff it first, so she doesn't.  Instead, Shui raises it to the other woman - most carefully ensuring she is not raising it to the screen - and makes certain to speak before taking a sip.

Heaven knows what kind of shape her throat will be in afterward.

"Dhakhingzuel, the Captain has a request.  He asks that you refrain from using the com system at this time.  His crew is taking great care to ensure that the pirates have no escape.  Distractions at this time might allow some chance of evasion, either by trick or luck."

Then she takes a careful sip (not a small one - a mid-sized, polite one).

The drink seems, perhaps oddly, to be only mildly alcoholic, at most, and has a taste somewhat reminiscent of cinnamon, with a hint of lemon.  The small sip taken by Shui seems totally harmless... and then a sort of warm tingling starts across her tongue, and her mouth is suddenly filled with the flavour of strawberries.

Within seconds the effect is gone and Dhakhingzuel is chuckling.  "You not have kveghoskh be-fore!  Is hard find in Hoomaan Space.  Must be fetched from Vargr Space.  Long way."

"I will not use com.  This I say, this I do."


"Yes, we still have coms, Profit Margin.  We also still have power.  Be advised that any approach will result in your being fired upon."

The threat from Harper's Dream is followed almost immediately by a laugh from Jockram, "Like they haven't fired on us before that.  Like to talk big, don't they?"

As if in response to this statement, even though it could not have been heard by the other ship, Profit Margin's sensors detect a pair of launches, and two more missiles hurtle away from Harper's Dream...

"Well, I guess she's got plenty of missiles, even if Yas said she had trouble finding them groundside."

Tylen's crosshairs are hovering on the engineering section of the "Harpers Dream" as he sees the missile launch.

"I do not BELIEVE the stupidity of some people!"

He exclaims as he thumbs the fire stud.


"Bomb gone!"

He remarks calmly to anyone who is listening, He dials up the sandcaster,

"Same drill as before Yas?"

He enquires.

"Aw, c'mon, Quad, we'd do the same if the roles were reversed," Yas chuckles and then adds in a more serious tone, but dead calm nevertheless, "but there's too little time once they get in reach, so I'll need someone to take the one on the port side.  Want that one, Quadman?  I've got the leader."

As she locks the targeting system on the missle she also fires up the scanner to hope to get a more detailed scan so she could locate all hardpoints that they have got on the ship.

She says nothing in response to Jock's comment.

"Wilco Yas. Take the closest"
Leaving Yas to take nearest missile,Tylen breaths deeply and tracks his target, as it comes into range he pumps the Sandcaster fire control.

Curious.  Shui rather enjoys the taste of the drink she tries.  She pauses a moment, then the sudden eruption of flavour widens her eyes and drives her thin brows toward the ceiling.  She blinks twice, then offers Dhakhingzuel a hesitant smile.  "That is...exceptional."  This time, her expression is not forced.  The drink must have cost a fair quantity, and for the woman to share it with her....

She offers the flask back with yet another small bow.  "My thanks...and the thanks of the Captain, as well."  The threat rings out from the woman's speaker, and Shui winces.  "It would seem," she notes, "that the battle is not yet complete."

Foolish people!  They are disabled, yet they open fire?  Can they be so thick-headed?  At this point, Shui can find no blame for any fire returned upon the easy target - only sorrow that the pirates have bought themselves a death sentence.

After all, why close in and risk the lives of the crew, when one can simply play a laser over the ship, over and over, until the resistance ends?

“You guys got a death wish or something?” Jago goes on in a conversational tone as he juggles the controls in an effort to make it harder for the missiles to lock.

“You could walk away from this, even now, might spend a few years in a cosy little cell planet side, but that’s got to be better than dead surly.”

Jago had absolutely no idea what sort of justice would be metered out if he handed these guys over to the authorities, but nor did he have any compunction about lying through his eye teeth about it. In a fight he considered words to be just another weapon, and a lie nothing more than a fencers feint or a military diversion. Bottom line is that he didn’t want to kill.

“I should warn you that if we have to make a hostile boarding, we have a Vargr with us, sister of the engineer from the Big Deal, it won’t be pretty.”

“Want a word with them Dhakhingzuel.”

Jago opens a channel so that the Vargr can express an opinion.

“That missile thing was just a bluff,” he adds on the tight beam to Jockram, “just in case the pirates had ground side contacts.”

Shui pauses.  That sounded like a request, and a good one.  A promise from the Vargr might actually turn the pirates over to the idea of surrender.  She waves her hand to the Vargr's com.  "In this occasion, I believe the Captain wishes you to have a word with the pirates," she explains quietly.

This...should be instructive.

"It look clear," Yas says over the intercom, sounding a bit dubious, "but let's no relax.  I've been on a ship that pulled this stunt once.  We'd taken hits and played bussom, and sure thing, the guys who came to board us was blown into smithereens before they could say 'trap'."  She chuckles dryly and finishes with, "Let's hope these boys aren't that coolheaded."

She taps her sensor readout as if that would help the results from her scan return sooner.  "Come on, you stupid thing," she says under her breath.

Dhakhingzuel acceots the flask, and mimics Shui's bow perfectly.  Then she turns towards the com and hammers the [Send] button with the heel of her hand.  "Piraate hrrgoazangd... thees ship is Number One top Piraate Hunter in whole Hoomaan Imper-ium!  Thees ship hunt piraate that no other dare!  I Vargr.  Vargr knows piraates.  I hire/rent thees ship be-cause you kill my kin.  This what Hoomaans name blood feud now.  I find best, and hire/rent."

"You fight now, you die, cert-ain.  You roll over, maybe you live.  We see how goes."


The missiles pass each other, two incoming, one outgoing... and Jockram replies to Jago, "Thought it was probably a lie of some sort.  Who ever heard of a Marine who couldn't find a weapon?"  His tone becomes more serious then, "Looks like they're both coming for you this time.  Maybe they saw you deal with them one at a time, and figured they'd see if you could handle two,"

From somewhere at the other end of the tight link, somebody cheers, and Jockram adds his own commentary, "As you can maybe tell from the noise, Hegerich just tagged Harper's Dream with the laser."
This message was last edited by the player at 12:37, Wed 17 Jan 2007.

"There it is!  Say nite-nite, little boom-stick," Yas comments and fires her two big guns once more.

She likes guns.

Big guns especially.

Once more she can feel it in her guts that it will be a clean hit; years ago she could never be sure if it was the so-called food or not that caused it, but ever since Sushi joined up she can rule that factor out for good.

The next moment, give or take an instant, she is rewarded by another silent firework display against the dark void of space.

"Chalk another one up for the Queen of Gunnery," she triumphantly calls over the comms and cheers.  It is always a good feeling when the missle does not strike the ship your are in, believe it not.

Shui nods slowly as Dhakhingzuel responds with her own assessment of the situation.  It certainly paints the picture rather well.  The pirates can sit out there and hope for blind luck to save them, while already being in an untenable situation, or they -

A cheer goes up, and she winces.  Another hit on them with a laser.  Shui wonders where it was aimed, and doubts it was fired upon the engines - they're unresponsive, after all.

Yas, of course, continues to fire away at the incoming missiles, and a blast of plasma burns one of them from space.

The second missile comes in closer, and detonates as Tylen catches it with a cloud of sand, wiping out the delicate guidance systems well beyond its blast radius.

Profit Margin's own missile is luckier, snaking in to erupt in a ball of flame and shrapnel close to the other ship.  Harper's Dream is spinning even more wildly now.

The long range visual shows writhing worms of blue-white light dancing, briefly, over her hull, dying mere seconds later.

"Well now," Conrad says, calmly, "What have we here?"

"Looks like she jus' lost all power, folks.  Runnin' on emergency batteries'll prob'ly make 'em more friendly, like."

The navigator's fingers skim across the console, and he pulls a number of displays to the centre and enlarges them.  "Jump drive's gone too, by all appearances.  Reckon they were fixin' to jump out, 'til Tylen stuck his foot out an' tripped 'em."

"No jump, no power, and no m-drive.  If they had some wheels, they could maybe roll down a hill, but that'd be 'bout all."

Tylen's fingers tighten on his controls. His last shot was within an ace of wiping out the enemy ship, a responsibility he does not relish. He steals himself as he hears the whirr of the loading system shifting another missile into the firing position. He gains an active lock, and paints the target with the transmission strength laser before opening a channel to the Boss.

"Jago, can't you tell those boneheads that my next shot'll wipe 'em out? Are they crazy or something? They're facing two ships, and they ain't got a lick in on either of us yet."

“Maybe they’d rather die than get taken, Tylen.”

“So, you guys ready to be rescued yet?” Jago asks over the comms, “my gunner is a bit concerned that he might have hurt you, I’m more concerned that the cost of the missiles he’s using.”

“From here it looks like your main power is shut down and your weapons are off line, now what does that remind me of?” Jago flicks  a few switches and slots a coin sized disk into the player as he talks, “oh yes, I remember,” a final button sends the recorded signal on it’s way, in a continuous loop..

"... ay Die under attack.  Location seven zero mark three degrees Right ascension, four six mark five degrees declination.  We need help.  Repeating.  This is freetrader Never say Die under attack.  Location seven zero mark three degrees Right ascension, four six mark five degrees declination.  We need help.  Main power has shut down, we are running on batteries.  Weapon systems are offline.  We have eight crew and fourteen passengers.  Help us, please."

"This is freetrader Never say Die under attack.  Location... "

“I don’t know if they can still here us, but that will give them something to think about if they can. ” Jago says over the tight been and to his crew, "I’m going to close in before they get a chance to recover to much, could you cover us Jockram?”

“Just out of curiosity Connrad,” Jago ask once the mike is off, “where are we in relation to the ‘Never Say Die’.

"She's only got one turret, and with two missles in there, there's no way to fit more than one more weapon in there, in case they manage to get that one powered again.  Still, I'd recommend to move in A.S.A.P., before they can get their collective arse into gear again, and commit mass homocide by firing," Yasmine reports casually and continues to observe the target, understanding full well their reluctance to surrender.

She knows full well that she would fight as long as there was any hope of victory.  Kind of like the ship that fell victim to the last attack, Never Say Die.  Maybe it was her Marine training speaking, but that is the way she is by now.

"May I speak to them, Skippy?  Just a few words," she then asks and wait for an answer.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 07:39, Sun 21 Jan 2007.

Tylen cycles his weapon controls to the laser. Using the full assistance of the targetting comp he lines up on the turret mounting. He uses the com to call engineering.

"Hey Saskia, what do your scanners say about the Hostile's structural integrity? I mean, if I was to target their turrett, one shot with the Laser on full, would that turn 'em critical or just pull their teeth?"

"Harper's Drea. .. ...fit Mar...  We are stan.... .own, repe.., .e are ...nding down.  Com...er and sens... are offline.  We have lost prima.. .ower, and re...st perm...ion to surr...er."

"We are ope...ing on em...ency power only, and want to of... our surrend.., Prof.. ..rgin.  Will you ...ept?  We ..ve inf...ation to tra.. for surren...r."

The signal coming in is weak and distorted.  Harper's Dream doesn't seem to have enough power to punch a clear signal through the magnetic field of the nearby gas giant.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:39, Sun 21 Jan 2007.

"Never mind that, Skippy..." Yas says but keeps a close eye on the ship.  Never know what they will do, after all.

Tylen offers up a little prayer for success and lines the crosshairs on the turret.

"Hold on folks, I'm gonna pull his teeth!"

He thumbs the fire stud. The beam of light lashes out and strikes the target square on.

"Result!" Tylen punches the air.

Saskia studies the readings she's being fed from the sensors, and is just about to advise Tylen regarding whether he should fire or not.

And then he does, before she can tell him not to.

In his excitement Tylen forgot to wait for Saskia's feedback, realising his error he calls engineering.

"Saskia, shit man! I got a clear shot and fired! What's there status?"

He closes his eyes praying he hasn't killed everyone on board....

"Hey, don't fire unless Jago or I..."

Yas has no time to tell him to hold his fire, as she has no wish to blow the other skip up unless it proves unavoidable, which at this time it certainly is not.  Or was, perhaps - all she can do now is hope that the ship will not blow up on its own.

"...tell you to."

Knowing she should have said it sooner part of the blame will be hers if things do go badly now.  She is the first gunner, after all.

"It's hard to tell for sure." Saskia checks the sensor readouts again.  "She's not a design I know.  Or, well, she is, but she looks like they've tinkered with her."

Fingers trace details on the display, tap-tap on the screen to magnify a section, then another.

"That last missile twisted her spine some.  That'll have weakened her a bit.  She might've sprung some plates because of that.  I'm trying to see what just happened.  But until the ejecta from the hit clears, it's a little tricky."

“Hold your fire Tylen!” Jago barks angrily as the laser lashes out at the stricken ship.

“Stand by Harpers dream, your surrender is accepted, we will not fire again,” Jago sends. “What is your status there, how many crew do you have and is anybody injured?”

As he talks, Jago continues to close with the other ship, but even now, he keeps a weather eye on the Ore Hound.

The minutes crawl by, with agonising slowness...

The cloud of fragments, and vapourised metal and plastic gradually clears, spreading away from the ship, and Harper's Dream doesn't look too much worse than before... apart from a melted, blackened scar on the hull, where her turret used to be.

".. ..ve five peo... aboard.  No s...ous inj...es here.  Re.eat .ive people, and no seri... inju...s.  Stan...g by."

Jago makes the necessary course corrections, and Profit Margin moves in closer to the other ship.  Ore Hound, meanwhile, moves in from the opposite direction, as Jockram sends, "She's all yours, Profit Margin.  We've got you covered."

Shui waits, watches.  There is nothing else she can do.  Their missle strikes home, a brilliant piece of work, and Yasmine and Tylen wipe away the enemy fire - more excellence.  But that missle, did it kill the ship, or the people?  Anxiety builds, and Jago pulls a perfect piece of 'diplomacy' out of his hat, the tape from the ship the pirates attacked.

To her relief, they offer surrender.

Then the Profit Margin fires again.

Heart in her throat, Shui waits while the com chatter flies back and forth as a result of Tylen's shot.  Have they killed a surrendered ship?  Apparantly not - the pirates' signal returns, and Shui closes her eyes.  Her fingers twitch from the tension release, and she slowly nods.  'No serious injuries'.

Best she goes and gets her medical kit.  The big version.

"I believe the situation is now completely controlled," she notes to their passenger.  "I must go prepare to assist the boarding party."  Shui gives the vargr a quick bow - unless there is anything more to do, she will take the opportunity to leave.

"Skip, I've got them in range now, just so you know," Yasmine reports over the intercom, sounding perhaps a bit too militaristic in tone even if the words are casual.

It was a close call and she will have to carefully consider if she is ready to ride with a second gunner that is trigger happy.  At the very least she needs to talk to Jago about it, and let Tylen know she is not happy.

But at the moment the job is still on and she steers her mind back on track, keeping an eye on both that ship as well as the surroundings.  If this is all the pirates has to come with she will be surprised, if pleasantly so.

Tylen puts his turrett on safe and unstraps his restraining harness. At this range Yas's plasma guns would be more use than his laser, and safer than a missile. He checks his revolvers are loaded and waits for Jago to announce the boarding team.

Jago cuts back on the viewer magnification several times as the stricken ship draws ever closer, until it can be clearly seen at x1, tumbling aimlessly through pace and gently rotating as it did so.

The tumble could be matched with little trouble, and as the Captain delicately worked the thrusters, it gradually became the background of stars that rotated, while the ship seemed to become still.

Still, but slowly spinning on it’s access, which was somewhat more problematic. To engage the magnetic couplings on its landing legs in sort of useful location, the Profit Margin had to move sideways at the same speed as the rotation, at a tangent that would let the landing gear touch the other ships hull, very gently, and timed to touch down somewhere near the other ships air lock.

Jago watched, carefully judging the speed of rotation and estimating the location of the airlock as it passed across the blind side of the Harpers Dream. A flick of eh wrist applies lateral thrust to the Profit Margin and it accelerates towards the top edge of the other ship, the air lock comes up to meet it and all seems to be meshing seamlessly until Jago curses quietly and veers off at a steep angle.

“To steep” he mutters, tossing the wet and mangled remains of a perfectly good cigar into the trash chute, and fishing a fresh one out of his pocket.

A thousand meters out, Jago stabilises the ‘Margin’ and begins to set up for another attempt.

Saskia relaxes, with a sigh, as she studies the figures.  Harper's Dream is going to live.  At least long enough for her crew to get off alive.  She'll never fly again, at least not legally, not in the Imperium.  Even if they repair the drives, her spine is out of true now, she'll never pass her next ISSB inspection.

"She's strong, Tylen, she's going to hold together."

The ship is dead, but she doesn't know it yet, and until she does know it, she'll keep her crew alive.

"She's a good ship, shame her frelling crew are such a waste of oxygen."

Watching the battered ship, Tylen weighs Saskia's words. He realises that the two missiles he fired have signed the ships death warrant, and he wishes he had thought of the turret sooner. He trips the Comm,

"Sorry Sask, I got carried away when they fired upon us. It's a frelling shame to trash a good ship like that, just 'cos her crew are bad."

He closes the circuit, leaving just incoming audio as he broods upon his actions. Seeking some measure of healing, he selects "Solveig's Song", a piece listed only as "Antiquity" in his computer's play list. As the haunting strains play, he meditates upon the view of the stricken vessel.

As he sets up for another attempt, Jago grumbles something in agreement, it is mostly inaudible, and perhaps not intended for ears other than his own, but the words ‘salvage’, ‘resale value’, and figures measured in hundreds of millions of credits can be made out.

Her bag gathered and ready, Shui anticipates a request from Jago.  She moves through the now-silent corridors, no longer disturbed by cries of joy and rage, and approaches the airlock.  There, she pauses for a check.  Medical bag - the big one.  Coat.  Pistol.  She pops out the clip, checks the ammunition to ensure its type, then replaces the magazine.  Jago would insist, anyway.

Fully prepared, or so she believes, the Doctor waits at the lock patiently, checking the current situation over her dataglove.  It's a fine illusion; inside, she feels sick to her stomach with worry over what she might find aboard the ship.

"Going to get suited up for the reception, boss." Yasmine reports to Jago.

Once they are close enough to verify there was no threat from the turret anymore, she steps out of her gunnery seat and marches over to suit up.  Once that is done she brings out her combat rifle and marches to where Sushi waits, offering her a big grin.

"Hey, doc, what's up?" she asks and then speaks over the intercom to Tylen, "Stay on that laser, but don't fire unless ordered, Quad.  Just show them you're there when they come a-walking, 'kay?"

Then she focuses on the doctor again.

"You just wait here and I'll slot them in to you, making sure they aren't bringing anything nasty.  Would be a shame for things to go wrong now, eh?  I'm sure you'll get some company here to keep them nice and polite."  She figures Jago and possibly someone else will show up to make sure they behave.

She rechecks the rifle and waits for Profit Margin to take ground, such as it is when the ground is another ship.  If they have any sense they will not try something stupid, but you never know.  They might try to take over Profit Margin, if they are dumb enough.

Tylen slumps a little in his seat. His over eagerness to negate the pirate threat has lead to Yas and Jago sidelining him. He awards himself a mental slap in the face, straps back into his harness, and power's up the turret. Proximity warnings flash across his screen, so he de-activates the missile system and selects the Laser. He lines it up on the command section of the enemy and allow's the turret comp to obtain an active lock. Anyone aboard who has a sensor will know they have a gun to their head.

Set up for a second attempt, Jago again watches Harpers Dream and judges his moment. Thrusters flare along the port side of the Profit Margin and it accelerates crabwise towards the top edge of the slowly spinning ship. The air lock comes up to meet the Profit Margin at the point of contact, landing legs kiss the other ships hull and latch down with a metallic clang that reverberates through both vestals, and suddenly the two ships are one, both spinning together as they tumble end over end thought the endless black. To the occupants they seem to be stationary, while the stars beyond twist and tumble across the sky, best not to look for long.

“That will do it,” Jago says with an air of obvious satisfaction.

“Saskia, I’m going to set the starboard thrusters to minimum pressure and leave them running, in time it will damp out the spin and we can work on the pitch tumble, could you monitor it please.”

“All hands, be advised that we will opening the main ramp to access that ship, the cargo hold will be in vacuum at that time and there will be no access to or from the passenger quarters. If you wish to enter or leave the main body of the ship, the air raft hanger will serve as a temporary air lock.”

OOC
Just waiting on a couple of PMs before I declare the boarding party.

"Roger, Jago.  I'll just keep everything in line from here.  It all looks good for now, though."

Saskia starts sliding readouts across the console, pulling the more important ones to the centre and enlarging them.  Frowning, she notes that one of the attitude thrusters is running a couple of percent too hot, and flags it to warn her if it reaches five percent over.

If need be she can shut it down and share its load between the others, but even at five, it'll still be well within safety tolerances.

From his position, at the fire-control station for the ventral turret, Tylen is in an ideal position to cut holes in the other ship's hull, should her crew try anything unfriendly.  The hull looks as if it's seen better days.  And most of the dents and scrapes on it can't be blamed on the recent battle.  There are old repairs in evidence there.

Conrad shuts down his nav console, and heads off to suit up.  He saw a little action during his Navy days, fifteen years ago, mostly on ships too small to have Marines of their own.

Shui and Yas meet by the iris valve connecting the air-raft hangar to Engineering.  Yas is already suited up, and armed, just in case.  Saskia is there too, busily rearranging her control panel for best efficiency.  The doors between the cargo bay and the passenger and crew sections are both locked, and the atmosphere is being pumped out of the cargo hold, ready for the main ramp to be dropped...

"Good day, Yasmine."  Shui picks the middle ground on the name this time.  "Apparantly I am - a doctor will be necessary aboard the ship."  She pauses when Yas 'coms Tylen, with instructions on firing.  Apparantly the overzealous shot has a few people on board a little more cautious.

She hopes that one mistake will not be Tylen's last aboard the Profit Margin.  Anyone who stays aboard will make mistake, sooner or later - if Tylen doesn't make another, it will be because he has been evicted.

She frowns at Yas' idea on how to proceed.  "But Yasmine - "  Shui gestures at the door.  "You require a second person aboard, do you not, to guard your back?  And as for myself, if I go and begin medical work immediately, the surviving pirates will be less likely to attempt something foolish, realizing at least that they will be treated well if they do not resist, and poorly if they do."  Tylen's laser-fire notwithstanding.  "Should I suit up and come along?"

"Oh no, you stay here until it is clear that they do surrender.  It'll take a while to pressurise the hold as well, so we'll just put then om through here - unless Jago says otherwise, of course.  But whether you go to them or they to you, you can't do anything if we're all in pressure suits anyway, so please stay back until you don't need a suit, all right?" Yas replies with a crooked smile.

"Beside, unless you are prepared to blow them to bits you shouldn't back me up," she adds more quietly, looking Sushi in the eyes and smiling more gently.

"And I am not going any further than into our own cargo hold - they will have to make their way to us, and that's when Quad can show them the big guns and make sure they don't try something really daft," she explains further.  "I'm the designated ramp guard on this ship, didn't you know?  It's one of my titles..."

She winks at the doctor.

Shui sighs.  Her inexperience with this shows.  Of course she cannot work on them while they're in pressure suits - ridiculous.  And they would be, considering their ship was holed, several times.

"I do have non-lethal ammunition," she notes, but it's a meaningless argument.  She can see that.  Shui sighs, and nods once.  Blow them to bits.

She wonders if she would, if both of their lives her in danger - hers and Yas' both.  Or another's.  Let us hope I never find out.

"Very well, Ramp Guard Crow."  Shui bows.  "Perhaps you might send them in my direction, as soon as poosible."  Best to get moving, VERY quickly - she will need the machines ready, and her full kit waiting.  Shui hurries off for her cabin.

Yas only nods at the idea of non-lethal ammo used in vacuum, and says nothing on the subject.

"That I will.  Never been too fond of vaccum - the bike doesn't run too well in it, after all," Yas chuckles and waves a hand as Sushi hurries off.

“How do you want to do this Yasmin, I figure to bring them across to you and Conrad, one at a time, and have them keep their Vac suits on until we get back to the planet, it will slow them down if they try anything, and if they have any weapons hidden away, they won’t be able to get at them., what do you think?”

“Once they are all over here, we’ll go and search the ship, and if it’s safe, let Saskia take a gander.”

"Well, I figured Quad, eh, Tylen could cover them from the turret.  That should really discourage any idiocy on their part, seeing that big gun able to sweep them off the hull instantly.  Then, when they get in towards the cargo holg he can come join me as we put them through, in case Sushi needs to have a look of anyone."

"Other than that, I don't care if you put them in the freezer or string them along on tow, as long as we don't have to sit guard twenty-four seven," Yas replies after a moments thought and shrugs.

"The less hassle we have with them the better, and we can't watch all of them all the time.  I'd say the meat lockers, it keeps them calm for sure," she finishes with a grin.

Then she leans in and nearly whispers, "Let's bring Quad along when we go to the other ship, he knows he's made a mistake and if he's prone to such things I think it'll show, but no one will get harmed then.  Hopefully it was just eagerness, wanting to impress, combined with nerves.  I'll have a talk with him later, though...  I've known too many trigger folks happy in the marines."

With Profit Margin clamped firmly onto the larger ship, and using her maneuvering thrusters to slow its insane gyrations, Ore Hound moves closer, rolling to bring her turret to bear on the paired ships from two hundred metres.

There is movement, visible on Tylen's targeting display, and on the external monitors.

Harper's Dream's airlock opens.

Jockram calls, his voice relayed over Profit Margin's internal speakers, "I can see right into the lock from here.  The lights are on, energency lights by the look of it, but it's empty.  No signs of movement in there."

Tylen lined the Laser up upon the opening door.

"I confirm Jockram, door opening, no sign of movement. I can't confirm it's empty as I don't have the angle."

“Harpers Dream, this is the Profit Margin, I’d like you over here one at a time, first one can come now, the others are to wait until told.”

“We are in no hurry here,” Jago goes on, addressing his crew and the Ore Hound as well now, “if they want to sit it out, they can stay there until we get them back into orbit, and let the authorities deal with them.”

“Saskia, would we be able to rig an umbilical to help with power comms and life support in?”

The captain continues his conversation on the tight beam and internal intercom, “unfortunately we can’t actually afford to do that, there are too many ways they could cause us grief if left in there to their own devices. If we can establish that umbilical, we can pump a sleep agent in there or something, otherwise Yasmin, Conrad and Tylen are going to have to go on in there and winkle them out. Dhakhingzuel, if you have a suit you can go along if you want, anyone from the hound want to make up numbers?”

Shui arrives in her room, and immediately begins clearing away all extraneous personal effects.  If pirates are to be delivered to them here, she needs this place spotless - nothing free to be used as a weapon, and as much space as she requires.  Her hands mechanically find the equipment, shuttle it to the lockers; her mind catalogues what she will need, and removes it from the same lockers.

The bugs go, too, into the quiet darkness of a closet.

All the while she keeps a close tab on the boarding work through her dataglove.

Saskia checks her figures, and calls Jago to confirm her results.

"Sure.  I could rig a link from our plant to their external connection, and feed them just enough power to keep her comms and LS running.  It might drain us a bit, and we'd probably lose power on something here, but I could do it, and make sure that any power drops come out of nonessential systems first."

"If you're thinking of towing her in, though, it'll be a frelling long job, and put a lot of strain on the our drives."

The outer hatch of Harper's Dream closes again, and stays closed.

Minutes pass, and it opens again.  Jockram's voice comes over the speakers, "There's somebody in the lock now.  Just one person coming out, as requested."


"Looks to be unarmed, Jago."

Tylen lines the laser cannon up upon the figure, conscious of the absurdity of the gesture. If he were to fire a single bolt into the drifting hulk then the shock of the energy transfer would send this figure spiralling off into the void. However, acutely aware of his previous error, he chooses to walk the path of restraint this time.

"Jago, I have the hostile covered. Request instruction."

"Their airlock is still open, Jago, so they can't cycle anybody else through for now.  Looks like they're going to wait nicely, for you to give the word."

Saskia double-checks some readouts.  "No odd electrical signatures, that don't go with the suit.  Nothing spiking.  No E.M. readings.  No radiation.  Looks clear."

Standing hte the cargo hold and waitying for the first sign of life from the airlock of the would-be pirates, Yas chuckles inside her suit and engages the opening sequence of the ramp, hearing from Sassy that it "looks clear".

With the bay in vacuum the traditional squeal is not heard where she stands, but she can feel it creeping up her legs through the floor.

"Easy now, don't you dare go higher," she smirks as it tickles her thighs.  However, the next moment the ramp is open enough for Yas to see the first of the POWs making the approach.

"Yas here, I got visual on the first.  Ramp is nearly fully lowered and I'm in position to cover the first guest.  I will send her, him or it through if it looks like they need some needlework," she reports over the intercom and levels the autorifle at the approachign figure, waving one hand in a gesture bidding them to approach.

“Thanks Jockram”
“Tylen, technically they are no longer ‘hostiles’, as they have surrendered, so we’ll just keep an eye on them, OK.”
“Conrad, get into the hold and help Yasmin please, just keep them there in the corner, unless they need medical attention.”

“You in the air lock, just come ahead up the ramp.”

Jago leaves his chair and steps back to the turret fire control cabins.

Tylen left the turret and made his way to the equipment lockers. He suited up and collected his Laser from his cabin before making his way down to the airlock.

"Hey Yas, where do you want me?"

With Yas and Tylen in the hold, providing a reception committee for their guests, Conrad waits at the Engineering side entrance to the airraft hangar, with his snub pistol in hand.

That way he can discourage any violent tendencies their reluctant passengers have when they're sent through to see the doctor.

He glances from Shui, to Saskia, and back again.  "Well now, look at me.  A thorn between two roses, so to speak."

A smile at the two women, and then he adds, "Don't y'all be worryin' none, Doc.  I'm only packin' tranq ammo today.  Mainly 'cause I'd hate to go killn' somebody that our Security Chief was wantin' to kill.  Might make her mad."

Looking back when she hears a voice, yas looks a bit befuddled at first.  She hears Conrad being asked to join her and then Tylen who she asked to sit in the turret turns up instead.

"In your turret?" she comment with a slightly wry rhetorical question and then shrugs.  Clearly plans change without anyone telling her.  Good thing this is not the Marines, she thinks and pushes it all aside with a sigh.

"I suppose you can stand over there and herd him into the corner, then keep an eye on him as I watch the others," she says, pointing to a spot between her and a corner where they have no access to any service panels.

Then shakes her head, mumbling something.

"Hey, Jago," she raises the captain over the link, "is it not strange?  A would-be pirate ship with no weapon arsenal to speak of?  I mean, all pirates I know about packs more than one turret with two missles and a laser or whatever it was, unless they are part of a much larger group and more acting like the hauler than the actuall agressor.  Something isn't right here."

Tylen nodded at Yas's suggestion and headed over where she suggested. He had the laser set to Maximum Discharge, single shot which should give him enough power to knock down a man in an environ suit should the worst arise.

The suited figure appears at the foot of the cargo ramp, and starts up the incline, hands now resting atop the helmet

Stepping into the hold, under the watchful eyes of Yas and Tylen, Profit Margin's internal lighting washes over the face plate of the helmet, and reveals that the prisoner is a young woman.

She looks back and forth between the two people in the open hold, and halts, awaiting further instructions.  Her hands don't move from where they lay on top of her helmet.

Finished her work, Shui heads back to the entrance in time to meet up with Saskia and Conrad.  One eyebrow rises slightly at the man's description, and she inclines her head.  Charming rogue that he is, Conrad has picked the one description she certainly has never heard - a rose.  A lilly, perhaps.  But not something so rich and vibrant as a rose.

"For myself," she replies, "I would prefer you alive to have to deal with the Security Chief's ire.  I trust you will take care?"

Hopefully all of them will.  She resolves to keep clear of the entrance and out of harm's way, but still within reach of any injured.  Yas and the other defenders certainly do not need any more distractions.

Yas only nods to Quad and then greets the first arrival with the sight of the more lethal end of her assault rifle.

The young woman does not look injured, and Yas does not care if it was a young woman or old man walking with a cane.  They may simply have sent out the most harmless first to try to pull synthool over their eyes - even if the ex Marine doubts that they are about to try something stupid.

Beside, as long as none of them makes any suspicious moves she will treat them with at least some respect - and if they proved themselves unworthy of it she is prepared to teach them to respect the powerful rifle in her hands.

She then moves up to make sure there are no weapons outside of the suit, keeping off to the side so that Tylen can shoot without Yas being in the direct line of fire.

At one point she pushes her helmet against that of the would-be pirate and speaks, knowing it will transfer just like the vibrations did before.

"How many are you?  Anyone injured?"

After waiting for a reply and finding no obvious sign of hidden weapons she backs off again and indicates the corner near Quad, using both the barrel of the rifle and a nod, although her eyes never leave the young woman.

"First guest has arrived, undamaged by the looks of it.  Parking her in the corner where all the bad girls and boys will go," she reports over the intercom.  "Unless the rest are old gentlemen letting youth and ladies go first I'd say we've got no injuries among them."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:20, Thu 01 Feb 2007.

Recognising the role Yas has delegated to him, Tylen shifts his position slightly to ensure a clear shot. He keeps the mirrored visor of his suit's helmet down and makes no movement except to cover the woman with his carbine. If Yas wishes to play a little "Good Cop, Bad Cop" then he is willing to represent the faceless, voiceless, threat.

The woman stands still as Yas speaks to her privately.  So far she has shown no intention of making any sort of radio contact, or any sort of false move...

Then she turns away, moving across the hold to stand near Tylen.

"It's looking good so far.  No sign of any trouble in there." Saskia comments to Shui and Conrad, before opening the channel to Jago.  "Get that, Jago?  Tylen and Yas have it all under control.  Time for them to send another one over."

Opening the intercomm where the pirates-turned-prisoners should not be able to listen in, Yas reports in.

"We got five, only serious injury is week-old broken arm.  I can't shake the feeling something is wrong here, boss," she says as she keeps an eye on the first arrival and waits for the airlock to release the next one.

Something sure is not right here, that much she knows for certain, but as for what is wrong she is still not certain.

"Hey, Ditsy, where would they have come from?  Think you can figure that out?  Like, I mean, were they here, did they jump in and just stumbled across us?  If these are pirates they're the worst lot so far, or this is some kind of weird Trojan Horse transport or whatever they call it," she further speaks over the comms, hoping that Conrad can shed some more light over this whole strangeness.

Tylen stares directly at the prisoner, unmoving. He holds the laser carbine tight in against his shoulder and lined up with the centre of the woman's suited chest. There can be no mistake that a false move will result in her being fatally shot.

Like Yas, Tylen has an uneasy sense that there is something odd about the prisoner, but is unable at this point to deduce what. He settles for keeping her covered.

“Thank’s Yasmin, things aren’t quite as expected, are they.”

“Harpers Dream, this is the Profit Margin, let’s have the next one please.”

‘Right now, lets see,’ Jago rubs his hands as he study’s Tylen’s fire control deck, and the unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth wags up and down like the tail of a happy dog, <i>’what does this one do?’<i>

Flicking a few switches, Jago activates the scanners for a full sweep.

OOC
If Jago can’t remote the comms to Tylen’s cabin, he’ll just step through to his own post for a moment.

Shui immediately raises her dataglove up and speaks softly over the comm.  "Before we bring any further people over, I wish to examine the woman immediately.  I would like to rule out the possibility of implanted weapons or biological warfare."

It's an ugly thought, but what's preventing the pirates from sending one of their own over with an implanted EMP device, or an explosive?

"If possible, please have her brought out of the hold immediately."  She can't very well examine the woman in a vaccuum.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:48, Mon 05 Feb 2007.

Tylen moves carefully to one side and motions with his carbine that the woman should move toward the hatch.

"Bringing her down now Doc."


He confirms over the com link.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:27, Mon 05 Feb 2007.

"That'd be me, at least as far as a nuke's concerned, Shui." Saskia replies to the doctor's concerns, "Didn't pick up anything odd in the way of EM radiation on the scanners as she came over.  And Yas and Tylen could probably sniff out anything else, unless it's something really obscure."

Using his override codes to pull a duplicate of his own panel configuration onto the gunnery console, Jago starts running sensor sweeps.  Once they're  going, he restores the console to ots more usual layout, and just keeps the sensor displays to one side of the HUD...

The prisoner waits nervously, fidgeting and shifting her weight from one foot to the other, seemingly unable to look at Tylen, which could be due to feelings of guilt on her part, or to his mirrored faceplate.

Outside the hold, in Engineering, Shui waits for Yas' decision on whether or not to send the prisoner through to her.  Conrad and Saskia maintain a watchful presence.

"Well now," Yas says over the intercom with a slightly ominous chuckle, not really having thought about biogenic warfare up until now, "if she's packing a simple bomb or biological stuff the only way to do damage to more than the cargohold, and us here, would be to get inside and out of her suit, wouldn't it?"

"Of course, if you seal her in somewhere first, then possibly, but it's a risk.  Mind you, this is just precaution speaking.  Somehow I doubt these are hardened pirates..."

She looks over at the prisoner and thinks for a moment.

"If we let her in, we need to take strikt precautions, or don't blame me if it indeed is some kind of fiendish trap.  It's up to you, Jago," she concludes.

“Send that one through to Shui please Yasmin, Conrad is with her if she needs protection, but until you know better, treat her as carrying a contagious disease. Meanwhile I’ll get the next one sent over.”

“Harpers Dream, this is the Profit Margin, next one can come over.”

“Do you have children over there?” he adds after a pause; just a long shot.

With a shrug, Yas nods to Tylen to escort the prisoner to Conrad.  She points at the doorway while looking at the prisoner to make sure she understands, but she does not say anything to the prisoner.

"She coming in.  Keep your eyes peeled, folks."

"I am perfectly willing to entertain suggestions, Ms. Crow," Shui states quietly on the comm, waiting for the prisoner.  "I hope that you, as the security officer, might have one.  But now that we have her aboard, such suggestions must come into place quickly, or we must examine her...equally quickly."

"We have no choice."

The woman is aboard now.  If they have to scan her, they have to do it soon.  Shui doesn't want to wait any more - the space between her shoulderblades feels cold as she considers the possibility of a booby trap.  Yas may be correct, but without a viable suggestion on containment, their only defense is speed - speed at the analysis, speed at dealing with any problems detected.

"Thank you, Ms. Blake," she whispers over the comm, on a different channel, so as not to disturb the current orders going out from Jago.  That's one thing finished - probably no nuclear weaponry.  A relief, to say the least.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:53, Tue 06 Feb 2007.

"No ...ldren, we aren't a pass...er ship, Pro... Ma...n.  Next ... co...g over now."  The transmission is faint, and filled with the hiss and crackle of static.

The airlock slides closed, clearly visible to Jockram, and less clearly to Jago and Saskia, whose screens are displaying it from an angle.

Two minutes later, it opens again, and a figure appears around the edge of the doorway, moving a lot less smoothly than the first one.  This one is a somewhat odd shape, and only seems to have a right arm.  Then the spin of the ships brings the distant sun up over the artificial horizon, and it becomes apparant that the left sleeve of the suit has a strap around its wrist, securing it to an equipment loop on the hip.

Yas and Tylen have a perfect view of the figure as it stumbles, unbalanced, across the hull, towards the ramp.

Meanwhile, their prisoner moves into the airraft hangar, which is doubling as a makeshift airlock.  Yas uses her override codes to lock the door, and flood the hangar with air.

The suited prisoner turns as the second door opens, and finds herself looking straight into the muzzle of Conrad's snub pistol.

Conrad beckons the woman forward, out of the airraft hangar, and into engineering.  He keeps the gun trained on the faceplate of her helmet.  Not that it will do much good, since the tranq rounds probably won't penetrate, but with luck, she might think he's using something more lethal.

"Y'all ready to see this here patient, Doc?"

"Of course," Shui states, all business now.  Still, she finds time for a quick smile of appreciation for the assistance, before she waves her hand impatiently at the suited figure.  "Thank you, Mr. Dietz...please, remove the suit.  Immediately."  Her voice is crisp, but not cold - it carries a hint of warmth, despite the gravity of the situation.  "We require a brief medical check before boarding," she explains, searching in her bag for the proper tools, "but it is painless, I assure you."

A small smile of reassurance, then, for the pirate.

Tylen again takes up position covering the approaching figure, careful to allow plenty of room for Yas to move, and the refugee to enter the hold. He is calm again now, after the excitement of the ship combat.

"Next one seems clean too, Jago." Saskia says quietly, hunched over the intercom, and mindful of Shui dealing with the first prisoner just a few metres away.

"Looks a bit odd, but Yas did mention a broken arm."

She turns her attention to Conrad and Shui, interested in the events occuring near the garage door, and concerned that somebody might do something to mess up her engineering department.

Keeping a watchful eye over the next arrival, Yas remains quiet and alert.  Either the next one is clumsy, overloaded or not in a good shape - although according to the woman there are no serious wounded aboard, unless they had done nothing to the broken arm.  If so, they all deserved to have a broken arm for a week just to teach them to at least do something the next time, the hardened soldier thinks.

Odd it is, perhaps some foul play.  With the gun ready to speak its lethal accent in the silence of space the former Marine Captain waits and watches.  If there is something going on she will not let it get to where it can hurt others.

The pirate ovens her unsnaps the seal on her helmet, and removes it.  In better light, without the headgear, she looks young, no more than her early twenties, perhaps, and very nervous.

With Conrad's gun still trained on her, she starts to unfasten the suit itself.  Underneath she wears a simple tee-shirt with some sort of logo on it (Hypagene Fantasies), and plain blue trousers.  A pair of shipslippers completes her outfit.

Once she is standing, with the vaccsuit dropped on the deck beside her, and her arms folded, defensively, across her chest, she submits to Shui's examination.



Meanwhile the second prisoner moves up into the glow of the hold lights.  Male this time.  He stops just short of Yas' gun muzzle, and awaits instructions.  Close up it can be seen that his arm has an equipment strap fastened around it, which is, in turn, clipped to one of the plastic rings used to secure tools to the waist of the suit.

Once more Yas moves up close to the prisoner and walks around him to see if he might be carrying anything odd, apart from possibly his arm under the suit which makes it harder to tell if there is anything else under there as well.  She makes certain to never get between Quad and the prisoner, however.

Once she has done that, whether she did spot anything or not, she moves up and puts her visor against his.

"Broken arm, yes?" she asks first, speaking clearly and loudly so he will hear her.  Then she decides to try something, "For pirates you sure are a sorry bunch, with no weaponry to back things up either.  Or do you usually pick on scouts and miners perhaps?"

She figures any kind of reaction might reveal something of interest, one way or another.

"Thank you," Shui says quietly, already beginning to examine the woman.  Finally she completes the tests, and studies the results.  In truth, the blood-test and so forth will take a little time, but as to the generalized conclusions....

Her voice goes out over the private crew line.  + Nothing out of the ordinary on a cursory scan.  The rest of the data will take a little time to process. +  Relief is evident in her voice.  She turns to the woman, eyes her warily as the computers continue their analysis, then leans a little closer, the hard planes of her face softening.  "Are you well?  Is there anything I can do for you?" she inquires.

Tylen raises an eyebrow at Yas's comment about Scouts, but since his visor is mirrored this is a futile gesture. He maintains his vigilant posture, covering the newcomer with his laser.

The man shrugs, but only with the shoulder that connects to the sleeve that is filled with an arm.


The young woman looks nervously at Conrad, then past Shui, to where Saskia sits throwing hostile glances in her direction every so often, then she looks back at Shui, "I'm fine.  Except... "  She sniffs at the air, and bites her bottom lip for a moment, then continues, "Well, have you got any decent coffee?  For the last month, I've been living on something that tastes like old hydraulic fluid."

Yas pulls back and shakes her head as she lifts her hand and points to the corner where Tylen is waiting.  No point in saying anything more as he cannot hear her since she broke contact.

What a sad bunch.

"Skippy, I suspect we've got the wrong crew.  Well, these are would-be pirates, first-timers, according to what this one said."

"That'd explain the idiotic lack of fire-power and numbskull tactics.  I do believe we've still got the the big fish swimming about out there somewhere.  This on was the guppy that dreamt about being a piranha, so to speak."

"We'll want to ask the skipper a few well selected questions, I believe.  Unless it's a vermin, that'd be the last person to leave their sorry little wreck, I'd say.  These first two haven't been carrying themselves to fit it, be it by shame or pride," she reported in, sounding both amused and disgusted at the same time, watching the man closely.

"They didn't exactly expect good old Profit Margin to hand them their collective arses on a platter made out of their own ship," she then chortles, and shakes her head again.  "This is the one with the broken arm, I presume.  We'll pass him on when the doc's ready.  Be advised that he might carry something under the suit beside his arm.  It's hard to tell for certain without getting him out of it first."

“Thanks Yasmin, I’ve have the scanners on max, in case this was just a decoy.”

“Shui, could you get that one back in her suit, and send her back out to where Yasmin and Tylen can keep an eye her, once she’s out you can take a look at the one with the broken arm.”

“Harpers Dream, next please.”

"Of course," Shui says, reassuringly.  She's a little distracted by listening to two things at once, but gets the general gist of both.  Then she pauses, touches her earpiece - a politeness, to let the woman know she is receiving - and nods.  + Of course, Captain. +  Going off the intercom, the doctor shrugs helplessly.  "I fear the coffee will have to wait until you're all settled in.  Right now, my captain wants you to suit up and return to the hold, so that I can examine the next of your people.  I'm certain that when all of your people are aboard, I will be able to serve you coffee."

With the amount of money they will receive from this, they can afford a little coffee.  And politeness costs nothing.

"It sounds as though you have had a terrible time," Shui continues.  The sad creature in front of her doesn't really fit the expectation, though she does not forget this woman was part of a crew ready to kill their ship, and them.

Tylen maintains his vigilance, concentrating on creating an imposing and menacing deterrent to any treachery.

The first and second prisoners change place, Yas handling the exchange through the airraft hangar once more.  By the time she gets back, the third has arrived.  He joins the first, female, prisoner, standing in the corner of the cargo hold while Tylen keeps watch.

The fourth is soon on the way over.

Meanwhile, the man with the broken arm removes his suit, with some difficulty and a little assistance from Shui.  The arm is sealed in a clear plastic cast, and supported by a sling.  All through Shui's examination, he keeps up an endless litany...  "Stupid idea this was.  I told the skipper that it was a bloody stupid idea, signing up for this, but would he listen?  I mean, he's had stupid ideas before, but this one...  I told him that as a get-rich-quick plan, it was probably his worst ever... "


And at last, if their numbers are to be believed, the final prisoner comes aboard.

Guiding the last prisoner into the corner, Yas does not bother talking to anyone of them for now, but once they are, supposedly, all tucked away she calls Jago.

"All right, boss, that should be all.  Shall we go over and make sure, or will we take their word for it?  On one hand I doubt they are lying, on the other hand it wouldn't surprise me if they did try something.  So, in order to be certain, I'd say we should take a look.  Wouldn't want someone blowing the thing up in some insane act, would we?"

Shui raises one eyebrow.  "We shall certainly do our best to deal with you in an expedient fashion, that you need not suffer more than is absolutely necessary to ensure the safety of this ship."  She motions to the suit.  "Please re-suit, and return to the bay.  When we are finished, I will see to your injuries."

Perhaps after any other injuries have been assessed.  Whining about his choice and placing the blame upon another is a particuarly loathesome trait.

Activating a secure link with his chin, Tylen contacts Yas and Jago.

"That looks like the last of them, you guys want me to go check?"

This is his field after all, stealth and surveilance are the stock in trade of the Scout. Briefly he remembers his training, they put recruits through a test like this. A disabled freighter, dead in space. They had to comb it for survivors, or hostiles, with only a basic environ suit and a laser carbine. He hadn't done badly on that one, and he was eager to erase his earlier mistake.

“Thank you everybody.  Shui, could you send your man back to the hold when you’ve finished with him. Yasmin, do you think you and Tylen can handle the sweep over there, or do you need a third person?”

"We're both going, Trigger-Happy," Yas replies to Tylen with a grin, clearly having found his new nickname, and then to Jago, "Nah, we'll do with two, you might need more than one to keep an eye on today's catch.  We'll check the old tub out and retrieve the data from it, boss."

"Well, unless someone else actually wants to come?  Skip?  Sassy?  Ditzy?  Sushi?"

"Either way, I suggest we go have a look at the piece of junk before it decides to crumble to dust," she continues while waiting to hear if anyone else wants to take a little stroll in the park and for someone to relieve them of the guard duty.

"Since you haven't got any military training, Trigger, let's make it easy.  We'll cover one another once we're inside, trading point as we progress.  Just to be on the safe side, it's kind of hard to trust someone's word when they were willing to blow you up a few moments earlier, eh?" she tells him, and shows with her hands how they will shift who is in the lead when she explains that bit.

“OK, go careful now, Conrad, could you cover the prisoners for a while.”

Tylen smiles behind his faceplate at the typical Marine arrogance, whilst the Scouts are not strictly a military organisation they recieved extensive combat training and he was more than capable of following her lead.

"Wilco Yas."

He responded, without taking his eyes from the prisoners.

Yas and Tylen exit the ship, and Jago closes the door behind them.  Those still aboard hear the screech of the hinge reverberating faintly through her hull.

Conrad, meanwhile, suits up and makes his way into the hold, snub pistol at the ready.  Saskia and Shui are left alone in Engineering, the medic still unable to get through to the passenger section for the time being.

The two women watch the monitor at Saskia's workstation, as two suited figures making their way, carefully, across the hull.


Tylen and Yas reach the airlock, which by their perspective appears to be a hole in the ground, with the approximate size and shape of a grave.  Most graves don't have lights inside though, not even the dim, red, emergency lights that this one has.


Jockram calls in on the tightband, "I'm going to stand down, Profit Margin.  I see you've got people going in now, so I'm figuring you wouldn't want us shooting with your people aboard her anyway."


Peering into the open lock, Yas and Tylen can see that it's empty.  There is a door at the other end, or at the bottom, from their angle.  The access panel next to it glows a welcoming green.

Tylen touched his Helmet to Yasmine's, eliminating the need for radio contact.

"What do you reckon? Ladies first? or would you prefer to cover me?"

"Ladies first, of course, you'll get your turn soon enough, Trigger," Yas grins back and adds, "Just don't try to communicate like this once we're back and out of the suits, you hear," and chortles briefly before she breaks contact.  Then she slowly enters the airlock, looking around for anything suggesting a problem.

Tylen circled the hole, in order to have a clear shot should anything attempt to attack Yas through the Airlock. He moved cautiously over the lip of the "hole" and aimed his carbine. He waited for Yas to make the next move.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:15, Thu 22 Feb 2007.

Yas swings over the edge of the opening, and falls to one end of it, as the ship's grav plates grab at her and drop her onto the floor inside the airlock.  She moves forward, giving Tylen room to move in behind her.  To each of the two Profit Margin crew members, the other one appears to be standing on a wall.  One of them is correct...

There is a brief flare of light, like a false dawn out here, so far from Arkadia's dim sun.  Jockram is adjusting Ore Hound's trajectory.


Inside Profit Margin. most of the rest of her crew keep watch on the monitors, as one of their friends vanishes into the hostile ship.  Conrad is the only one with no time to observe them, as he keeps a close eye on the prisoners.

"Profit Margin the first of your people is at the inner hatch now.  Maybe waiting to see if the Lady of the House will invite them in."

"They still got breathable air, if a bit too cold for you, boss.  Let's see then if we are welcome," Yas reports and makes sure that Trigger is inside before she starts the cycle of the airlock.

"If there's a code or something we'll need to ask the guests about it, of course - but makes sure not to do so alone," she continues, pointing out the obvious perhaps, but still feeling it to be her responsibility as the security chief.

"Ready, Trigger?" she asks, looking back at her boarding partner, hoping she will not end up getting shot in the excitement.

Tylen briefly lifts his gloved hand from the pistol gtip of his carbine and makes the "OK" signal with his hand, never taking his eyes off the Airlock door as it cycles open.

"And the outer door is closing, but you can probably see that much from there." Jockram provides a cheerful commentary for Profit Margin's stay-at-home crewmembers.  His voice, though, carries a slight undertone of concern, as he adds, "That's it.  I can't see any more, you'll have to wait for them to phone home."
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:51, Fri 23 Feb 2007.

“Thanks Jockram, we’ll keep you up to date.”

“Conrad, can you identify the captain out of that little bunch?”

"Sure thing, Jago." Conrad replies.

"I can send that one through to Shui, and she can fetch him up there, if'n y'all'd like?  That'll let me stay on guard here.  Though they look more likely to faint than make trouble."

Shui studies the feed from her data glove with deep concern.  Yasmine and Tylen both are in the ship, and out of their reach.  She has confidence, but still...the pirates' ship, the pirates' ground.  If there is anyone left aboard, or if they have booby-trapped the vessel....

She thumbs her com.  + I am open for business, if someone wishes to send the Captain to me. +  Then she shoots a worried glance to Saskia.  "Ms. Blake, what do you suspect the odds are that one of these prisoners has set up a booby-trap of some kind?"

"We've got breathable air here," Yas comments for all to hear.

"The place is a mess, but it looks like it's been this way for some time.  Perhaps to accommodate their drive, I'm no engineer so I can't say.  We'll proceed towards the bridge," she reports back to the others.

The makeshift airlock opens, and a suited figure steps through into Profit Margin's Engineering section.  Pausing as the door slides closed, it raises its hands and twists the helmet a quarter turn to the left, then lifts it clear of the neck ring.

The man face revealed is a man, in his late forties, with thinning, sandy hair and pale blue eyes.  He gives a quick look around the room, then turns his attention to Shui.  "Captain Linus Harper, of Harper's Dream.  Your captain wants to see me."  He looks, and sounds, extremely depressed, and he is sweating.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:23, Mon 26 Feb 2007.

"Captain Harper," Shui replies, with a short bow.  "Welcome aboard."  From her, it isn't sarcasm.  "I am Shui Tiesi, the on-board physician.  Please remove your suit, and I'll do a quick medical check on you.  Once we're finished that, to my satisfaction, I'll take you to see the Captain."

She offers him a small, sympathetic smile.  "I can offer you coffee or tea after, if you desire.  It is not yet prepared, though, so it may take a minute or two to brew."

He doesn't looks like a dangerous pirate, but looks can be deceiving.  At the very least, he is a desperate man.  Shui makes certain that both she and Saskia stand out of his reach when he takes off his vac-suit.

Harper removes his suit, an older model, and eventually stands in a faded shipsuit, while Shui conducts a swift examination.  He smiles, and nods thanks for the offer of refreshments, "Tea would be very welcome, thank you."

"I shall see about making some as soon as I have conveyed you to the Captain."  Shui turns to her compatriot.  "Ms. Blake - I leave the fort in your capable hands."  She flicks on her Dataglove.  + Mr. Dietz - I will be taking Captain Harper up, now - be advised that it is only Ms. Blake here, at the moment. +

Not really a concern.  If anything came through there and threatened the Profit Margin, Shui would put odds on Saskia to hold the breach as well or better than anyone else aboard.

"This way, sir," she says, and motions the man to follow.  She waits until he falls in beside her, then begins the short trek to where Captain Jago awaits.

"Go ahead.  I have a little something here, in case anybody gets in here and tries anything." Saskia replies, waving Shui towards the door with her left hand.

Her right, meanwhile, reaches into a toolbox on the floor next to her chair, and fetches out a heavy torsion wrench.  It makes a satisfactory thud as she lays it on the edge of the panel, within easy reach.

Tylen speaks to Yasmine.

"There's something weird about this Yas, it's like the ship has been stuck together from parts in a hurry."

He gestures at the panel with the datacrystal writer,

"And I have no idea what that is there for, nor the Aslan stuff earlier. Do you think we should be recording this stuff for Saskia?"

Yas grins at Tylen and shakes her head. 

"There's some crystal writer on a make-shift panel here.  Wires and things are drawn all over the place too, like they have completely modified the system.  Any ideas, Sassy, why they would do such a thing to the bridge?" she sends back to Profit Margin.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:38, Thu 01 Mar 2007.

Shui escorts Captain Harper through to where Jago waits, still sitting at the fire control panel for the belly turret.  As they travel through the Crew Lounge, the man is quiet, and sweating...

Finally Shui presents him to Jago.


"Profit Margin... just checking in, so you'll know I'm still awake.  Nothing to report so far.  I'm not sure what's going on here.  I just got a good look at that pirate's tail.  She looks to be heavily modified, and not too neatly."  Jockram sounds genuinely puzzled, as he adds, "Reckon it would've only been a matter of time before she tore herself apart, even if the two of us hadn't kicked her about."

Shui arrives before the Captain, her cargo safe beside her.  "Captain Harper," she begins, "this is Captain Jago.  Captain Jago, Captain Harper."  The Steward steps aside to allow the men to greet each other, and wonders how that will play out.  "Would you like coffee, Captain Jago?" she inquires, knowing already that Harper would be looking for some tea.

Tylen retrieves the package of data crystals. He switches on the camcorder and begins to record all of the makeshift modifications made to the ships systems.

"Hope this means something to you Sas."

He mutters.

"Looks like they thought piracy was easy.  All they got packing was misslies, and only one left.  Never seen a more moronic approach," Yas reports back to Profit Margin, her disapproval clear for all to hear.  "With the state of the ship and the armament - or lack thereof - I'd be surprised if they even could take on an escape pod and come out victorious.  It's insane, to put it mildly."

Tylen turns back to Yas,

"I don't know if I should play them here, suppose they wipe or something. Maybe we should get Saskia to rig a portable set, isolated from the ship's systems in case of a virus....or is that being TOTALLY paranoid?"

He offered her a grin and a shrug.

Yas looks back at Tylen with a grin.

Harper winces, visibly, as Yas' voice sounds from the speaker alongside Jago, describing the pitiful state of Harper's Dream.

Jago starts a little when Shui arrives with the other captain, and his hand goes automatically to the Stub pistol on his belt, though he leaves it there, for the moment. The surprise is because Jago had only asked for the Captain to be identified, not bought to him, still no matter. Jago looks the other Captain over bef0re answering Shui, “yes, coffee would be good, thanks.”

Then he turns to the comms system, “thanks Jockram, I have Captain Harper here, he’s just going to explain what’s going on.” Then turning to  look at Harper through the open door of Tylen’s station, he says, “go ahead Captain, we are all listening.”

Tylen squints at the labels,

"Mostly just dates, but there's one with a name, 'Choleosti' or something."

He glances round.

"Yas, I have a bad feeling about this. This ship isn't set up right to be an efficient Pirate, there's got to be another one somewhere."

He wouldn't want to be on this ship at the best of times, and in the state it was after the pounding she'd recieved from the Profit Margin it felt even less spaceworthy.

"Do you reckon we should check the holds and Engineering? Just to see if there's anything else that Saskia and Jockram should know about?"

Shui notes the tension in the room, and realizes she may have erred by not waiting for a response from the Captain.  Still, Captain Harper looks pretty much buffaloed by the situation; it should be safe enough.  She quickly moves back into the galley, fires up a fresh pot of coffee, and sets up the tea for brewing.

Then, while she waits for the beverages to finish, Shui returns to the cabin in order to keep an eye on the situation between Captains Lanza and Harper.

Yas grimaces ominously. 

"Found log and data, downloading and exploring the rest of this thing before it decides to disintegrate spontaneously.  This ship either a decoy or the worst idea I've ever seen in my whole life," Yas reports back to the ship, having no idea that the captain of it is listening in.

Tylen nods and moves off in the direction of the rear of the ship, His carbine held in tight against his shoulder. He moves slowly, knees slightly bent, testing his footing each time he takes a step before committing his weight. His eyes sweep constantly, left to right, up and down and the barrel of the gun points where he is looking. It had been a long time since he had praticed "Sweep and Clear" but the procedure came back quickly. He approached the hatchway to Engineering, and checked the readout on the bulkhead to make sure it was still registering air tight.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:57, Mon 05 Mar 2007.

"What do you meed to know, Captain?" Harper asks, still looking totally defeated, as he stands, slump-shouldered, in front of Jago.  Yas' commentary on the exploration of the pirate vessel continues quietly in the background, and the erstwhile scourge of the space lanes looks even worse with each sentence.

"She's right you know.  We aren't pirates, not really.  Your's is the first ship we've attacked.  Looks like we made a really bad choice of target."

“What about the 'Big Deal' and 'Never Say Die', if you didn’t attack them, who did?”

“I want to know how long you’ve been out here, where you came from, and why you have a ship that’s been soldered together by an eight year old?”

Jago glares sternly at the other captain, though his eyes frequently flick back tom the readouts from the scanners.

Tylen activates his radio with his chin as he seals his visor.

"There's a pressure drop in here Yas, I'm sealing the suit up again for the moment."

He walks slowly round the compartment, videoing the damage for Sas.

Unnoticed, with both Captains concentrating upon one another, Shui slips out of the room again.  She quickly prepares a single cup of tea, puts the teapot on a tray, adds a cup of coffee, prepared to Jago's specifications.

Returning to the cabin, she places the tray and teapot well out of the other Captain's reach, over by the open doorway, then passes Jago his coffee.  Turning to Captain Harper, she hands him a single cup of slightly cooled tea, and silently offers a choice of lemon or milk.

"Understood," Yas replies. 

"The engineering section is not exactly in prime condition either.  We're continuing the search," she reports back to Profit Margin.

"We haven't attacked any other ships.  Ever." Harper assures Jago, accepting his tea, with lemon, from Shui with a grateful nod and a half smile.  "The ship's been in a mess for a while.  We've tried to hold her together as best we could, using salvaged parts and scrounged replacements.  She was falling apart around us, though, and we would never have passed the Bureau safety checks."

"We just weren't making enough cash to keep her operating, but losing her would cost more, since we had so much sunk into her from the back at the start.  We even  tried upgrading her, but the money was just disappearing quicker than air through a hull breach." he sighs, and takes a sip of the tea.

"Then we were hit, by pirates, though they'd call themselves a warship, I'd guess...  Swordies.  In exchabge for them not blowing us to dust, we signed on with them.  We weren't the first, either."

“Thanks Shui,” Jago says taking a sip of the scalding hot coffee, “do you think you could team up with Saskia and rig a couple of state rooms so they can’t be opened from inside, 7 and 8 preferably, and look in on Dhakhingzuel please, she might be upset if these aren’t her brother’s killers.”

“Did you get any of that Yasmin, we are looking for evidence either conforms Captain Harper’s story, or c0ntradicts it.”

“Jockram, we might be out here for a while yet if these aren’t the people we are looking for, are you OK with that?”

And finally, turning back to the other captain, Jago says, “so, tell me all about it, this ‘war ship’, when did they hit you, what exactly is the deal, specs of the ship, how you make contact, where we can find it, what you know of other ships they have recruited…. I think that will do for starters.”

"It was while we were at Choleosti.  A couple of weeks back.  The ship was one of those ugly traders that the Swordies use, Kauffahrer class, I believe, but it was armed to the teeth."

Harper shakes his head, "There wasn't a lot we could do, except surrender.  Then they offered us the deal.  They pulled us off the ship for two days, after we accepted, and when they let us back aboard, they told us that there's a bomb hidden aboard somewhere.  It will detonate if we don't report in at least once every six weeks to have it reset."

"They've given the same deal to another five ships... all small traders like yours or ours."

"Yas, I've been listening in.  I have a question for you." Saskia says, her voice flat, level, perfectly under control, perhaps even a little too perfectly.  Anybody in Engineering right now could hardly fail to notice her fingers drumming on the console.

"How bad is it, over there?  And how much of it is battle damage?"

Yas makes a face at Tylen and then replies to Sas.

"Hmm?  How bad it is?  Battle damage?  Oh, well, let's put it like this, the engineering section took the worst of the hit.  It's been modified too, but to what extent is a bit tricker to say, considering the damage done," she explains calmly, "forgetting" to mention that the damage is mostly cables and such pulled out of their sockets due to the shifting of the ship.  "Trigger is videoing it so you can review it later without risking coming over here, wouldn't want anyone stepping in the wrong place after the beating they took."

Tylen relaxed a little as he examined the epoxy patches. Whilst they weren't perfect, they would hold better once the copartment was repressurised.

"Oh, right, yeah, I copied, Skip...  I can buy that story, because with this ship it is suicidal to take on anything more than a scout-sized ship," Yas replies, remembering that Jago had asked her something as well after trying to think of something suitable to tell Saskia.

"We're moving on," she then reports back to Profit Margin.

Tylen moved again to the hatchway, his carbine up tight to his shoulder, the barrel sweeping the hallway, always pointing where he was looking. He moved in the direction of the hold. On reaching the door, he followed the same procedure and checked the tell-tale for signs of depressurisation or contamination.

Harper considers what he has just said, and then adds, "Might even be more ships by now."

Meanwhile, Yas and Tylen continue their exploration of the pirate vessel...
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:08, Sat 10 Mar 2007.

Tylen took a quick glance along the corridor to ensure there was nothing moving, then moved to examine the heavy door at the end of the lounge.

"Certainly Captain, though the crew of 'Harper's Dream' will have to wait until the hold is repressurized," she notes.  The Steward moves a few steps away from the two men, but still in the room, and activates the intercom in Dhakhingzuel's cabin with her dataglove link.

+ Pardon me, Dhakhingzuel; the Captain wishes to give you an update on the situation.  As it turns out, these particular pirates are not the ones for whom you have been searching.  The situation has become more complex than our earlier suppositions.  At the moment, the Captain is in discussion with his opposing number.  Is there anything you require by way of information?  I regret that at the moment, it is impossible for me to reach you physically. +

Yas looks around.

Tylen checks the readout beside the door before operating the controls.

The Vargr's voice is filled with barely repressed excitement as she answer's Shui's call, "Your Cap-tain, she is strong.  She have lead you here, to caught-siezed thees piraate ship, in great battle of glory, and even now, the Cap-tain grevdegd... ah... tortures the nagghountzurr'chok for infor-mat-ions about where those who killed Oezzarr are hiding!"

"Thees is good news!  I wait."

Tylen glances into the empty hold.

"Damn!"

He turns back to Yas,

"I was hoping they might have got something valuable on board we could salvage."

He glances back up the corridor.

"You want to pick a number?"

Jago studies the other captain, “tough break,” he says eventually, though there’s no sign of actual sympathy on his face.

“So, if you were caught at Choleosti, what are you doing here? What’s your procedure for reporting in? Is this sword ship here with you? tell me about that ship, weapons, crew, anything of interest?”

“If we land a real prize, just maybe, depending on how my partner feels, just maybe you’re off the hook. That ain’t a promise, you tried to blow us out of space and I don’t forget that, but it’s all you’ve got right now.”

"As I said, they told us they'd planted a bomb, and that we were to travel to other systems, raiding as we went.  But we have to be back at Choleosti in time for them to reset the timer on the bomb.  So every six weeks, we have to be back at Choleosti, to meet them and transfer anything we've taken to their ship.  Then they'd pay us, wind back the timer, and send us on our way again."

Harper falls silent for a moment, then suddenly bursts out, "Look, I'm not proud of this, but they didn't leave us a lot of choice."

Tylen moves to the desk and flicks through the clipboard. He taps the keyboard to see if the computer is live. He's looking for inventory or any reference to the Captains credit balance. He'd like to see the Profit Margin compensated for the munitions they expended, and if card cash is not available perhaps there are spare missiles that would top up his magazine.

Shui stares at the man with pity in her eyes; pity, and a faint tinge of disgust.  She struggles with that for a moment, then finally gives in, letting it come.  There are always choices.  This man chose poorly, opting to save his ship, trading the lives of others he might find, including theirs, in order to avoid losing a machine.  He could have put in somewhere.  Dumped the ship.  Done anything save commit acts of violence against innocents to save his own skin, and that of his ship.

He would have killed them, had his people been better shots than their own.  His crew had made the same choice, by not instigating a mutiny.

She keeps her silence, but it is an effort.

“You’re still not telling me the stuff I want to hear,” Jago says, annoyance filtering passed the unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth.

Jago hadn’t considered the morality of the man’s actions until he bought it up, now that he has Jago thinks he’s either lying or stupid, and as that applies to the whole crew, lying is edging out in front.

The Vargr’s response puts the smile back on his face though, “you know maybe I ought to let Dhakhingzuel ask the questions.”

"I don't know what else to tell you.  It was work for them, or be killed.  Ask your boarding party about the ship... we were in no state to fight back.  This was the first attack we've carried out, and you saw how this one turned out.  You ever hear the term, 'an offer you can't refuse', Captain?"  Harper looks increasingly worried, "I had to agree, to save the lives of the people on my crew."

Tylen turned to Yas.

"Do you want to start looking for this 'Bomb', just to see if the story checks out?"

He opened the drawers and carefully went through the assorted items stored, noting with amusement that the Captain really DID sort his underwear by colour.

Turning to Tylen, Yas grinned.

Yas and Tylen continue their search...


Harper is sweating, and his face is pale, as he completes his little tirade.  He winds down, and seems to shrink in on himself, "I take full responsibility for this, Captain.  Put my crew off somewhere... they were following my orders... and turn me in to the Authorities."

“We’ll take this one at a time then shall we,” Jago says, ignoring the other captains plea, “what is your procedure for reporting in? I want dates and times, exact location, approaches, passwords, the works.”

"There are no set dates or times.  We are just supposed to go back when we have something to pass on to them.  If we don't get back in time, then we... don't ever go back.  We're supposed to avoid Choleosti itself.  The system's a binary, with a companion star about five AUs out.  That companion has a planet in close orbit around it.  Just a small rock, too small to even have a real name, they just call it Beta One."

"We're just supposed to jump in and take up position over the rock and wait to be contacted."

Harper starts chewing at his thumbnail.  "We were hit close to the main world, but they told us we had to come back to Beta One every time.  I'm guessing that they have at least two ships in the system... the one that grabbed us, and another at Beta One for the returning ships to meet with."

"If your people are in the computer, they'll have the codes we were given already.  It's not a password, it's a datastring that we're supposed to transmit once we're in place.  Then we'll be sent instructions regarding a meeting."

Tylen looks through the bills,

"Gods! These guys are REALLY operating on a shoestring! I think we may be due a reward from whatever authority moniters Ship safety in this sector just for putting her out of commision!"

He clips the bills back to their board.

"Want to try the rest of the quarters?"

“That’s more like it,” Jago says, “so how long have you been in this system, there have been two ships lost to pirates, and if it’s not you, then perhaps you could at least throw some light on the situation.”

"We arrived this morning.  About fourteen hours ago." a crooked smile, and Harper says, somewhat sourly, "I was actually congratulating myself on finding a target so quickly.  Thought it was so lucky... "

A scowl darkens Jago’s brow as the other captain speaks, and he takes a long pull on his unlit cigar to ensure that he doesn’t lose his temper.

“Where did they place the bomb, how much time is left on it?” he asks eventually in measured tone.

Yas turns to Tylen again. 

"We're conducting a brief search, nothing of interest to report at this itime," she reports back to Profit Margin.

Tylen pats the pocket containing the data crystals.

"I'm just gonna run through the other cabins then we're good to go."

Tylen steps out into the corridor and checks the other cabins.

Shui silently re-enters the cabin - given the intensity of the discussion, it's unlikely anyone noticed she was gone.  She replaces the cooled cup of coffee before Jago with a small nod and smile, then does the same for Captain Harper's tea.  No nod or smile there; the tea might be hot, but the Steward is cold.

She moves away, just outside of Captain Harper's line of sight.  It's instinctual to her - the man is still dangerous, he proves that with every word from his mouth.  In desperation, he was willing to turn to piracy, to kill to save himself.  In desperation, he may be willing to do something equally foolish now.

Harper shakes his head, "If I knew where the bomb is, I wouldn't be in this mess.  I would have had it removed and tossed overboard, then  made sure to stay well away from Choleosti in future."

A shrug, then, "It's the fact that I don't know where it is that's forced me to go on with this.  Even with no money, I'd have kept on working as normal, in the hope of one big score that could have let us sort out the ship and get her back into reasonable shape.  Having a bomb hidden aboard restricted my options."

"As for how long... we were at Choleosti two weeks ago, and were told we had six weeks to grab what we could and report back to get the timer reset.  So four weeks left."

Tylen and Yas continue their search for a while longer. 

Yas' chrono chimes. 

Conrad continues to watch the prisoners, while Saskia monitors the external sensors.  The only thing showing on them is the Ore Hound...

Tylen completed his sweep of the crew quarters and then came back to Yas.

"Nothing to report, although some of them are lousy housekeepers. The state the Ship is in would make searching for a bomb a major undertaking outside of a ship yard, and I don't know if they could sweep it in four weeks. I guess what we do with the hulk is in Jago's hands now."

He slung his carbine in a more comfortable position, but still kept both his hands on the weapon.

"Time to go? Or is there anything else you want to check?"

Yas met Tylen on his way back to her.

"Nothing of interest from a casual search, and more than that would be fruitless with only two of us.  We're coming back in with all logs and data downloaded," she reports back to Profit Margin.  "Let me know if you want me to... talk... to our guests, boss," she adds, sounding completely serious, although everyone on Profit Margin fully knows she is utterly opposed to such methods and more likely to shoot anyone trying to do it than stand by and let prisoners be mistreated.

Beyond mumbling about her years in service she has always refused to say more about it than making it clear she is utterly opposed to it.  Pretending is a completely other thing, though.

Tylen agrees with a nod and follows Yas back to the Bridge, and then on to the Profit Margin. He makes no comment as to Yas's hinting at interrogation of the prisoners, although he is fairly sure she is bluffing....fairly sure.

Yas and Tylen make their way back across the spinning hull of Harper's Dream.  Part way across there is a brief flash from far overhead, as Jockram makes another minor course correction, adjusting for the slowing rotation of the erstwhile pirate vessel.

In Profit Margin's hold, Conrad gives them a friendly wave as they enter, then raises the ramp.  The characteristic squeal of the hinges vibrates up through their boots, sounding much quieter than usual, but somehow comforting to those who've been with the ship for a while.


Harper spreads his arms, and his voice develops a pleading tone, as he waits for Jago to speak to him, "That's all true.  Every word of it."

Shui taps her finger on her lips.  Once.  Then she nods.  "Captain Lanza, may I speak with you a moment?"  She turns her eyes on the other Captain for a heartbeat or two, then glances out into the other room.  Perhaps they could ensconce him there for a moment, in sight but outside of easy hearing for a whisper or three.

“OK captain, but don’t expect a lot of sympathy on a boat you just tried to destroy, would you wait out there a minuet please.”

"Did you get that data bas Yasmin?" he asks over the comms.

“Whats on your mind Shuie?” Jago smiles, "well done by the way, I wasn't sure how you'd react to a combat situation, you did good."

"Every last bit, boss.  They didn't bother putting in any safety at all, which fits the state of the ship I might add.  A sorry sight," Yas replies to Jago and grins over at Tylen, waves to Conrad and the proceeds through the bay so that she can speak directly to Jago, although she stops near Conrad for a moment.

"None dead?  They must be behaving then, eh?" she asks over the open channel, continuing the act of the hard-case Marine that would have no issues with spacing the prisoners or worse.

"Coming you way, boss.  Trigger, help Conrad a bit, will you?  Just don't shoot without me saying so," she continues, using the chance to both joke with Tylen again and to further still come across as a mean lean fighting machine.

Unless stopped she will then proceed towards Jago, waiting for any answers or questions from Conrad or Tylen first.

"Well, now, Yasmine.  Mus' admit that they's been so quiet that I did consider shootin' one of 'em, jus' a li'l' bit, to see if I could liven the rest up some." Conrad replies, his face deadpan, and his voice deadly serious.

"Then I r'membered how much paperwork I'd have to do, jus' to get fresh ammo outta Jago, so I figured it was prob'ly best not to."

"Las' I heard, Jago's busy tort - uh - interviewin' their skipper."

"Hmm, yes.  Maybe you could use your blade instead.  A slow leak could be interesting," Yas replies in a similar deadpan manner, although she adds a bleak grin and makes a motion as if puncturing something with a blade, followed by a hiss she makes as if of leaking air.

"What!?  He started without me again?  By the Fiery Forek Nebula, he promised he wouldn't after last time!  I'd better get going then," she says, waves to Conrad again and moves towards the exit in a hurry.

"Thank you, Captain," Shui replies, pleased with the compliment.  She detests violence, hates killing, but that doesn't mean she's going to shirk at her work.  No, it's all the more reason to work that much harder, to ensure that everything functions as smoothly as possible.  Fewer people injured, that way.  Fewer killed, possibly.

She eyes the other Captain as he steps out, carefully keeping herself out of his reach.  He's broken, Shui thinks, but there's no sense in being foolish.  The man remains what he is.  Once he is just out of whisper-earshot, she begins her explanation to the Captain, all the while keeping an eye upon their guest.

"Captain Lanza, I might have mentioned this before.  Please forgive me if I have.  I have taken passage and work on many ships, to many worlds.  And I have heard of such situations before.  Rumors, of course, and not of this specific circumstance, but there will always be those who force others to do their dirty work for them."  Another glance at the 'pirate'.  "Of course, this does not remove culpability for the actions of those who...'knuckle under', I believe is the phrase."

She shifts slightly, and her lips thin.  Shui's heartrate increases as her tension rises; she doesn't like talking about this, and wonders how to get through it without doing something she will regret.  "I have a great deal of experience dealing with people, Captain Lanza," she begins slowly, feeling her way through this minefield.  "As a Ship's Doctor, for example.  I have to trust my instincts - instincts not based on nebulous hunches, but on observation of body language, intonation, stress tell-tales, and so forth.  My analysis of our guest and his crew leads me to the conclusion that he is quite frightened and, more importantly, speaking the truth."

Tylen smiles mirthlessly at the Banter between Conrad and Yas. He taps his Carbine knowingly at Dietz's ammo joke.

"Well we have no problem now Amigo, this thing charges for free, as long as Sas keeps the engine running."

He covers the dispirited prisoners,

"And the bonus is they don't bleed on the carpet so Shui Tiesi won't have nothing to complain about."

“Pretty much the conclusion I’d come to,” Jago agrees with a thoughtful nod, “so what do you thing we ought to do with them Shui, just space them, or put them back on their ship and set them adrift?”

Shui raises one eyebrow.  "I was under the impression we would be taking them to the authorities, Captain Lanza."  He's probably joking.  He's likely joking.  She has a difficult time reading the Jago at the best of times.  "I feel rather certain the planetary authorities would be more-than-pleased to lay hands upon those who have been attacking their local traffic."

"Good point.  Have fun," Yas replies, over the com as before, as she steps out of the cargo bay and makes her way through the smaller bay and finally steps out into the hall towards the bridge.

"Nice to get out of this thing," she mumbles to herself as she makes her way forward.  Soon she sees the captain of the other ship - if that is what it is - and grins at him.

"Nice and easy now, I don't want to risk making holes in our panels here," she tells him and pats her assault rifle.  Glancing over towards Tylen's gun pod she sees it occupied.

"Hey there.  Got the downloaded data here, boss," she calls out so Jago will hear her, never really taking her eyes off their guest.

"Jago?" Saskia says quietly over the comms, "I'd like to recommend that, since Yas and Tylen are back, we should move away from Harper's Dream for now."

She doesn't add, because that frelling heap of yotz makes the place look untidy, opting, instead, for the much more professional sounding, "I don't think she's going to break up right away, but she has been under a little strain lately, and we shouldn't risk piggybacking her for too long.  With no power, we can find her again, easily enough, any time in the next few thousand years."

Captain Harper stands looking out of the bridge viewports, acutely aware that he is being watched from the small cubicle at the rear of the bridge.  He can hear whispering back there, but can't make out the words.

Then te woman enters, and he turns to look at her.  Straight away, he can tell, from the fact that she's wearing a vaccsuit, that she's been aboard his ship.  He can't meet her gaze, as she gives him a warning to behave himself, then goes to speak to her own commander, and the medic.


Down in the hold, the ramp closes up, and there is a rush of air and blown dust as Saskia uses the controls currently showing on her panel to repressurise the cargo space.  Tylen and Conrad are now guarding the prisoners in a real atmosphere, rather than just one of fear and concern.

The first prisoner, the young woman, waves a hand at the two guards, and mimes removing her helmet.  Then she stands, waiting.

Alert to any movement, Tylen has the Carbine centred directly between the womans eyes before he recognises the movement as a request to remove helmets. He withdraws, slowly and nods.

The woman reaches up and undogs her helmet, then lifts it clear of the neck ring before placing it on the floor at her feet.  "That's better.  Even the best of those things can get a bit warm after a while.  Is it alright if I help him take his off too?"

"He'll have trouble taking it off by himself, with his arm broken, and he's probably just as uncomfortable as I was."

Again she mimes the removal of a helmet, before pointing to herself and the injured man.

“Indeed Shui, but if we are right, and what Harper says is true, he is not the one, we were to be his first victim.”

“Thanks Yasmin,” Jago adds when his security chief comes in.

“We’ll have to think about what to do with them, meanwhile, would you get them all locked away in stateroom 8 please.”

“Best make sure Dhakhingzuel doesn’t have access to them,” he adds when he’s sure the mike is off and drawing little circles with a finger by his temple.

“You’ve got it Saskia,” he responds to the engineers request over the intercom again, “did you copy that ’Ore Hound’, I’m thinking of heading back to check out the wreck on the asteroid, want to come along?”

Jago leaves the gunnery stations for the more spacious accommodation afforded ion the bridge, and flops back into the familiar comfort of his own chair. He flicks three overhead switches in quick succession and runs his experienced eye over the displays before him.

With a warning of, “stand by everybody,” Jago releases the harpers dream, and edges gently away, applying lateral thrust to cancel the spinning motions that the Profit Margin had adopted to latch on to the other ship.